Sunday June 21, 2009
Adibah Noor: Full of life and vigour
By MUMTAJ BEGUM
She has been rejected because of her size. But tenacious Adibah Noor has crossed the hurdles and is now one of Malaysia’s showbiz heavyweights.
ONE thing obvious about Adibah Noor is how easily she talks to everyone, and how everyone wants to chat with her. During this recent interview at Ntv7 headquarters in Sri Pentas in Bandar Utama, Petaling Jaya, every person she bumps into greets her with a friendly hello to which she will stop for a chat.
It’s not her size but her larger-than-life personality that people can’t miss. For one, the multi-faceted entertainer is quick with the jokes (and the laughs), apart from being well-mannered and warm.
My meeting with Adibah – lasting 90 minutes – is peppered with lah and various laughs (the comedienne claims to be able to do a wicked imitation of the Woody Woodpecker laugh!).
So you may assume that Adibah loves to talk – but, just as long as it’s not about herself.
Adibah Noor plays a 65-year-old mother in Phua Chu Kang Sdn Bhd. It’s a show she enjoys working on, especially alongside funnymen Harith Iskander (left) and Gurmit Singh (third from right). The rest of the cast seen here are (from left) Nell Ng, Irene Ang and Carliff Carleel. It took some six months to finally set up this appointment with one of Malaysia’s best-known faces as Adibah believes there isn’t much to talk about herself. Also, she tends to avoid the limelight when she’s not singing, emceeing or acting.
Who would’ve expected a shy person who is not too comfortable mingling with the crowd behind that voluble persona?
The actress currently seen in the sitcom Phua Chu Kang Sdn Bhd on Ntv7 concurs it is unusual considering her profession but adds: “I don’t mind performing for them as long as I am not sitting down with them.”
On more than a few occasions, her preference to stay in the background was evident. At a press conference for Yasmin Ahmad’s recent movie Talentime, in which Adibah is cast as a school principal, the latter made a beeline for the back behind the large cast and crew, completely obscured from the media’s view.
And she was not among the revellers at the after-party of the 16th Anugerah Industri Muzik (AIM) she co-hosted with fellow actor-comedian Afdlin Shauki on May 2 and which was broadcast on Ntv7. Adibah left soon after the music awards ceremony ended.
Yasmin agrees that Adibah does not feel comfortable around crowds, but they crowd around her anyway. Says the renowned director: “I think to overcome shyness she becomes this funny and witty person, which makes everyone love her.”
Adibah and Irene Ang in a scene from Phua Chu Kang Sdn Bhd. Karaoke training
Ironically, for a person who shies away from parties, weddings and music lounges, Adibah was pushed onto the path of showbiz by her karaoke buddies.
The Kuala Lumpur native has always loved to sing, but is not formally trained. She modestly states that she “belasah-je; hentam-je (just do it)”.
As a student at KL’s Convent Bukit Nanas she got into scrapes with her teachers for singing in class. When she started teaching English at SM Datuk Harun in Old Klang Road, KL – after graduating from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia with a degree in Teaching English as a Second Language – she visited a karaoke lounge to sing – and destress.
Singing offered Adibah an escape from the daily grind of facing her strict senior colleagues at school.
“When you are at the karaoke lounge every day, you meet people who are there too every day and you become friends with them. Those people were my karaoke kaki and they were the ones who suggested I do something about my singing,” she recalls.
When she didn’t heed their suggestion, they got the deejay at the lounge to record her singing and sent it to various competitions. “Before I knew it, they told me, ‘You are in this competition, you better go.’ I scolded them because I didn’t have anything to wear. I was a schoolteacher; my salary was, like, RM1,200 a month. How was I to get nice clothes? And some more no size,” she quips.
Nonetheless, she gamely turned up for the competitions, but now claims: “I never won because of my size.”
Size doesn’t matter
Plus-sized or not, Adibah walked away as the champion of Suara 90-an Nescafe back in 1994. That led her to a job with Datin Seri Tiara Jacquelina’s then outfit, Kit Kat Club Entertainment.
Tiara remembers: “In the late 1990s I created The Kit Kat Klub, a very popular one-hour show featuring a group of multi-talented boys and girls who sang, danced and performed sketches. ... We got Adibah to be part of Kit Kat Klub. We saw in Adibah an unexplored and undiscovered potential in her comic skills and her ability to warm up audiences with her infectious personality, besides being blessed with the most amazing voice I’d heard in recent history.
“She fitted in perfectly with the rest of the crazy bunch at Kit Kat Klub and together we toured all over Malaysia doing corporate events and product launches, and having the best laughs along the way.”
In 1995, Adibah resigned from teaching, becoming a part-time singer. During the day she worked on several jobs including copywriting and teaching English to adults at the National Institute of Public Administration (Intan).
In 1999, Adibah decided to pursue singing professionally, much to her parents’ dismay.
“My parents were so against it. I did the most terrible thing to my mum. She was performing the Haj when I quit teaching. She only found out when she came back and saw that I hadn’t woken up to go to school. It was Cold War for a couple of years at my home until I decided to move out. Then I got the Intan job, and my parents (both civil servants) were really relieved that I went back to government service. And I thought, ‘God, I got them what they wanted, please let me get out of this (laughs),’” says the third of four children.
Adibah got her wish when she landed a singing gig at a club with two other musicians.
Now 10 years after her decision to become a singer, Adibah has established herself as a big-name entertainer in the industry.
Unlike most singers, Adibah is not signed to any recording company – an arrangement that suits the chanteuse just fine.
Hiring songwriters with her own money, she made her debut album Terlalu Istimewa. It was an exceptional work that saw the title track scoop three awards at TV3’s Anugerah Juara Lagu 2007: best vocal performance, best song in the ballad category, and song of the year (the tune was composed by Azlan Abu Hassan with lyrics by the singer herself).
Right now Adibah is working on her second album which features mixed genres; it is expected to be out sometime this year. “The working title is Teman. I want my music to be someone’s company, when they are chilling at home,” says the woman with the power-packed voice in reference to the album title.
Adibah as Cikgu Adibah in Yasmin Ahmad’s recent movie Talentime. In good company
From singing, the versatile Adibah branched into a host of projects including acting in stage musicals like On the Street Where He Lives (1998) and Chang & Eng the Musical (2002), hosting AIM in 2008 and 2009, and taking on supporting roles in the comedy movie Buli Balik (2006) as well as Yasmin Ahmad films Sepet (2004), Gubra and Mukhsin (2006), and this year’s Talentime.
As with singing, Adibah sort of fell into acting. Yasmin, whom she first met when she did voiceovers, wrote an advertisement with Adibah in mind, convinced that the songstress would be the perfect person for one of TV3’s Makan Bola World Cup advertisements in 2002. Thus began a regular collaboration between the two.
Yasmin explains why she wanted Adibah for the ad: “When I cast people, I look for charisma; Adibah is outrageously charismatic. She brings spontaneity to the roles that I’ve written. I think she is singularly the finest actress in our country.”
Adibah admits to being nervous about acting at first but was grateful for Yasmin’s guidance. Nowadays, she says, she enjoys acting, especially when she works with people like Gurmit Singh, the Singaporean lead actor of Phua Chu Kang Sdn Bhd.
“It’s wonderful to work with him,” the Gurmit Singh fan gushes before making the oddest of statements about her co-stars in the series. “He’s an alien, Afdlin (Shauki) is also an alien, so too is Harith (Iskander). Their ideas just flow, flow and flow, I’ll be, like, in awe. Where do they get the ideas from? There’s a basic storyline, basic script, and you just play along and it works. It’s fantastic.”
She continues: “I’ve been laughing and laughing on the PCK set, and they have to do take after take. Gurmit, he’s so funny, you know how he talks lah when he’s Phua Chu Kang. Until one day the director said, ‘Why don’t we let Adibah laugh first?’ That really killed my laughter. And I said okay-lah, okay-lah. I just laugh a lot, and people find that funny. I am tickled easily.”
In the Malaysian spin-off of the hit Singaporean sitcom (which retains Gurmit Singh and Irene Ang as Mr and Mrs PCK), Adibah plays Fatimah, the bossy mother of Phua’s business partner Izzy (Harith).
“Just goes to show how old I look. Harith (42) is older than me. It’s the size, you know! It’s the size,” says the 39-year-old before cheerfully declaring: “I am supposed to be this 65-year-old woman who still has a lot of zest in her.”
Adibah, who is single, is not dreading turning 40 next year. After all, she’s happy and contented with what she’s achieved so far. She has a great career and a life being spent in the company of good friends and 17 cats (yes, 17! One of the ring tones on her mobile phone has a cat meowing).
But the feisty lady has not forgotten her early days in the industry.
“Rejection about my size is so far away,” she says. “The days I was bullied are gone. Now don’t even try it. I am not a diva, but enough is enough. Those days of putting on make-up in the toilet ... sometimes I cried when I did that. Those days are gone. After Juara Lagu I put my foot down. Now I make reasonable demands only-lah.”
Adibah recently completed a road tour with a handful of fans to visit charity homes around Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. “The Kembara Terlalu Istimewa 08-09 tour lasted 14 months. What we did was pick a charity home in one state or place once a month. It’s fulfilling to do this, and addictive too. I’d always wanted to do this. When I voiced this intention, a fan suggested going to charity homes (instead of shopping malls) to perform.”
Is there anything else she wants to conquer? “I would like to do my own show. Not exactly a talk show but something along that line – one that can help people to be self-confident, relaxed and be themselves.”
To think that all this started thanks to the persistence of her karaoke pals. The title of her winning album Terlalu Istimewa (Especially Wonderful) best describes the success of this larger-than-life teacher-turned-artiste.
Adibah Noor appears in ‘Phua Chu Kang Sdn Bhd’ on Ntv7 (also Astro Channel 107) every Wednesday at 8.30pm.
Related story:
The Adibah Noor psyche
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