For a man who makes no bones about his contempt for local television, Jim Chim Sui-man is remarkably patient about increasingly having to appear on the small screen. When he spoke to the Post in 2004 while publicising his role in the stage satire The Great Entertainer, Chim was livid about his 'inhuman' treatment by a local station during a charity show - his scheduled four-minute performance was whittled down to just one. A year later, the stage veteran was still spewing invectives about main-stream television.
But this time round, Chim emerges from his interview for Buzz, TVB's magazine show on the local entertainment scene, in an astonishingly calm frame of mind. He still views local programming as 'manipulative', but his rage against the mass entertainment machine has visibly subsided.
'Oh, I've made adjustments to all that,' he says with a grin. Chim says he realises that he must embrace television if he's to accept and understand popular culture. 'And since I've always said the television industry is like a factory, perhaps it's time to go in and experience the factory.'
The TV interview is a mark of Chim's growing celebrity. The attention isn't just due to his lead role in the new film, Simply Actors. Still active in Theatre Ensemble, the performing arts company he founded with partner Olivia Yan Wing-pui, Chim is gaining a reputation as the guru of aspiring young actors such as Karena Lam Ka-yan and as the frontman du jour in advertising campaigns for products ranging from painkillers to banking services.
Despite extensive press coverage of his film work, Chim is first and foremost a stage actor. After years of hard graft, he struck mainstream success with two blockbuster stage satires: Man of La Tiger and L'Empereur du Chant. The landmark productions earned him widespread recognition and acclaim - and he doesn't see any reason to be modest about it.
'Those two shows pulled in 150,000 people,' he says. 'How often do you hear of something like that
