STILL IN A DAZE, 25 YEARS ON

I just had an alarming revelation: if Malcolm Png was indeed a recruit back in 1987 when Army Daze made its debut, that would make him 43 this year.

I imagine he would have gotten married at age 28, become a father at 32, and have three kids by now. He would have probably won a Singapore Armed Forces scholarship and gone on to achieve honours in either Aeronautical Engineering or International Law. And thanks to his annoyingly fastidious attention to detail, he should now be heading some high-level national security project in Bukit Gombak...

But life can be cruel. Instead, poor Malcolm remains forever 18, forced to relive his Basic Military Training (BMT). Again. And again.

Did Malcolm and I have any inkling that life would take such a turn? That his silly antics with best buddies Ah Beng, Johari, Kenny and Krishna would captivate thousands and still raise a guffaw after a quarter of a century?

I can safely tell you, no, not in a thousand years.

Back then, I was a geeky little journalist with The Sunday Times. As I had also written a bestselling humour book about National Service (NS), a theatre company asked if I would consider turning it into a stage play.

The book was written as a (fictitious!) first-person account of a mummy's boy going through BMT, so the prospect of writing a stage monologue was thoroughly unappealing. I turned it down.

I resisted for two more years before finally relenting in 1987, when I came up with the idea of spinning a story around five boys instead. But I still used one voice (Malcolm's) to deliver pithy narratives after each scene.

I had the most fun coming up with Malcolm's buddies. I knew they all had to be from diverse yet recognisable backgrounds, as they would be an amalgam of people we'd known or met during NS.

Out of my trusty typewriter flew the one-liners, taking sly digs at Singaporean stereotypes, from Ah Lians to Mat Rockers, and buxomy Indian girlfriends to flamboyantly fey boys.

As much as the recruits were goofy, they were also an affectionate tribute to all my army mates during my NS years. We were as green as our crisply starched uniforms when we began our journey together, but a little more grown up by the time we folded them away to step back into the civilian world.

NS wasn't so much about a loss of innocence, but discovering a sense of belonging. We may not have fully understood nationhood at 18, yet we felt we all had a stake together in how things turned out.

Army Daze made its debut, defied odds and expectations to play to full houses every night. The rest is hysteria.

"My army mates and I were as green as our crisply starched uniforms when we began our journey together, but a little more grown up by the time we folded them away to step back into the civilian world."

- Mr Chiang