BEFORE being diagnosed with breast and kidney cancers in late 2005, Koh Chieng Mun's greatest fear was of growing old.

Now, the actress most famous for her role as heartland housewife Dolly in the TV sitcom Under One Roof is just grateful to be alive.

In late 1999, her father, then 65, had to undergo operations to fix detached retinas in both his eyes.

Koh says: 'I saw my father get old very quickly because of his illness and I dreaded the day when my body would not cooperate with me anymore.'

So when the doctors dropped the bombshell about her cancer, it seemed that her fear had come true.

She underwent an eight-hour operation in November 2005 to remove tumours in her breast and kidney. This was followed by six months of radio- and chemotherapy in the first half of 2006.

'You go through chemotherapy and see yourself yellow with age. Your skin is dry and you feel old, all vitality is gone from you, and you wonder if you'll ever feel that vitality again,' she says.

Well, the answer is yes. One can and will feel that vitality again, as Koh shows.

In April last year, she was given the all-clear, as the last cancer scan and blood test showed no cancerous cells. But she continues to be on Tamoxifen, a medication used to treat breast cancer, and will have to take it for five more years.

She says: 'After having suffered the illness, never again do I want to go through it. When you're ill, you just feel terrible every day. Nobody knows how much time they have in life. Now I wake up every morning and I feel well - I'm very grateful for that.'

You point out that she has enviably abundant tresses that are teased into a voluminous do. 'Actually, this is a wig,' she declares unabashedly, patting the crown of her counterfeit coiff.

Her real hair is a trendy, short crop. She says she is wearing a wig for the interview because she thought the hairstyle would go better with the dress she wants to change into for the photoshoot later.

We are speaking at her studio-cum-office in Tiong Bahru Road, and she is looking well. Dressed smartly in black pinstripe trousers, a white T-shirt and a black blazer, she wears heavy make-up but looks a tad younger than her 48 years.

Although she was crushed by the news about her cancer, she says she was comforted by how the tumours had been caught early.

As a National Cancer Centre spokesman for breast cancer in 2001 and 2002, she was aware of cancer and the treatments involved.

'Because I knew it was highly treatable, I wasn't that scared. Most women would be scared at the prospect of losing their breasts to a mastectomy, but I knew that my lump was contained in one area, so all I had was a lumpectomy.'

Flashback

'I bombed a lot when I first started doing stand-up comedy in a pub called Laughs in 1991 with Kumar. We were two "pa bei si" (Hokkien for very thick-skinned) people' - On the perils of performing live

'The joy of having my own space did not mean anything anymore. You come home and stare at your four walls and think, what's the meaning of working my a** off and coming home to these four walls?' - On moving back to live with her parents after 20 years of living alone

'One year we did a comedy spoof of Cinderella, called Hard-up Bella, whom I played. My ugly stepsisters were the pretty ones while my grandmother was the Wicked Witch of East Coast Road. So when it was time to do the Ra Ra Show, I was already used to this sort of nonsense' - Koh (aged four in the photo with her elder brother Chung Fai) - On hamming it up in the school plays

Cheekily, she adds: 'It would have been a little harder to take if I had to have a mastectomy. I'd have to go look for a new bra.'

Surviving cancer has changed her view on life, she says. 'Before, I would put things off and give excuses that I'm too tired or busy to deal with them. Now, any opportunity I get to spend time with friends and family, I will go.'

Three days after the interview, she mails over three Ziploc bags. Inside are 38 neatly captioned photographs of herself, aged four years to now, that leave you in stitches.

In one, she is aged 18, posing proudly in an ensemble that is best described as a fashion disaster.

In an accompanying note, she writes: 'Now that I'm nearly 50, there is nothing that would embarrass me - old pictures of me included.'

It is with this new attitude to life that Koh is embracing her new career - as a businesswoman.

She's plugged $200,000 of her savings into setting up My Healthy Lifestyle Pte Ltd, which will distribute weight-control dietary supplements by an American company called Pharmachem Inc.

Today, she launches Lose Inch, which purports to cut 66 per cent of all carbohydrates you eat, at Guardian pharmacies. She plans to launch Lose Fats, which will block 60 per cent of your fat intake, within the next month.

She started using Lose Inch herself three weeks ago, as one of the side effects of Tamoxifen is weight gain, especially around the middle.

'I'm not so concerned about weight loss,' says the actress, who has always been chubby and curvy. 'I'm more concerned about having a better body line and less bulk around the abdomen.'

Although she misses acting - and you can see it in the way her eyes light up when she discusses her past roles - she's still too weak to return to acting full-time.

'I don't think I can go and film a Chinese drama day and night. I don't want to commit to a director and later say 'I can't take it, I'm too tired'. They can't wait for you to recover and take a day off,' she says.

More serious than ditzy

SHE may be best remembered for her ditzy character on television, but Koh is much more serious in real life.

She speaks in a low, sensuous tone with a crisp British accent, and is the complete antithesis of Dolly Tan, the television housewife she played for eight years on Under One Roof on Channel 5.

But she warms up quickly when reminiscing about her early days in entertainment and breaks occasionally into raucous laughter when she dishes cheeky tidbits about friends like comedian Kumar, actor Gurmit Singh and theatre director Ong Keng Sen.

She teases Kumar for being unable to sing in pitch and Ong for being a killjoy backstage at Beauty World in 1988. Of Singh, she recalls that he used to be rather proficient at Chinese dance.

She chuckles when describing the 'lurid green leotard bodysuit' she had to wear while learning to act, sing and dance at now-defunct Haw Par Villa Dragon World theme park back in 1990.

There, she had various dance lessons, all of which she struggled through.

Her Chinese dance teacher told her there was 'no hope' for her, and her jazz dance teacher was more concerned about her not gaining weight.

She recalls: 'He gave me one piece of advice that I will always remember. He said: 'Koko (what they called me at the time), after you eat, you must not sit down or you'll get Spanish hips'. That's something I've lived by since.'

She was born on Dec 17, 1959, the third of four children. Her father, a retired Cold Storage production manager, is 74, as is her mother, who used to sell economy rice at a stall in People's Park Complex.

Her elder sister, Jean Sansom - actually her cousin who lost her parents at the age of four and was adopted by Koh's parents - is in her 50s and a receptionist at a clinic. Her elder brother Chung Fai, 49, is a gynaecologist with a sub-speciality in cervical cancer, and her younger brother Chung Kwong, 44, works in the construction trade.

She started acting when she was just six. During school holidays, she performed live in pre-show skits in cinemas, alongside old names like Hamid Bond, Sakura Teng and comedic duo Wang Sa and Ye Fong.

Her mother, who was also a seamstress, supplied costumes to the actors. Young Koh tagged along for the delivery one day, and ran onstage when they called for a volunteer. She impressed the producers, who then asked her to perform regularly.

'I've never been shy or had stage fright,' she deadpans.

She stopped after three years because 'my father said 'if you go on like this, you will end up as a getai entertainer' and told me to go study'.

She studied at Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ) Kellock, CHIJ Town Convent and Catholic Junior College, and was never very interested in or good at academia.

In secondary school, she joined the Literary, Drama and Debate Society (LDDS) with the sole purpose of meeting boys from nearby St Joseph's Institution.

'We'd always meet at St Joseph's Cathedral and have school functions every Saturday,' she recalls, letting on that she had her first kiss when she was 15, at one of these functions.

'The guy wasn't very handsome. In those days, my taste was not so good. And after that, we pretended it didn't happen,' she says, breaking into peals of laughter.

She went on to study music and literature - the only two subjects she says she was interested in - at London's Ealing College on a scholarship from Marr Munning, a private British trust fund.

She graduated in 1983 and returned to Singapore to join then-Singapore Broadcasting Corporation's Radio 5 as a producer-presenter on a classical music channel.

Close friend Lim Sek, 48, chief executive of entertainment company Music & Movement, recalls: 'In the beginning, we didn't know she could act because she hosted shows on the classical music channels. But she started out when the local comedy scene was kickstarting and had a lot of successes.'

Her first acting roles were in TheatreWorks' A Comedy Today in 1987 and the Dick Lee musical Beauty World in 1988, but she says she was an 'accidental actress'.

'As a young girl, I thought I'd be the director of a public relations agency, so I could meet a lot of people and organise events, perhaps,' she muses.

Bitten by the acting bug, she quit radio and joined Haw Par Villa when she was 30. She worked every day from 8.30am to 6pm, performing at the theme park four times a day. But she left after six months as she thought the pay, at $1,000 a month, was bad.

In 1992, she clinched a role in the chorus of another Dick Lee musical Nagraland, which toured Japan. In 1993, she was cast as Miss La La, a ditzy beauty queen wannabe in Channel 5's rambunctious skit show The Ra Ra Show. Although popular, it was pulled off the air after 10 months due to viewers' complaints that its racy content was damaging to children.

'It was anarchy. Every week we'd get a call from one ministry or another, saying 'please do not make fun of our campaigns', then we'd lie low for a week, and the next week we'd push the envelope again. Because you know, there are only three things that are funny: politics, sex and money,' she reminisces.

She propelled to fame in 1995 when she landed a meaty role in Under One Roof, which was Channel 5's first English language sitcom, acting alongside Channel 8 comedian Moses Lim and radio deejay Vernetta Lopez.

For eight years, she played Dolly, and won Best Comedy Actress at the Asian Television Awards for the role in 1996.

'This is the one role that I'll always be remembered for,' she says matter-of-factly, unperturbed that her other acting credits - such as Ronda in another Channel 5 sitcom, Living With Lydia (2002-2005), and in stage musicals like Twist Of Fate (1997 and 1998) - have not been as high-profile.

'I think she's my better half,' she concludes of her alter ego.

'I'm a little bit serious, a bit of a worrier, sometimes I get a bit bad-tempered - all the bad things lah, you know.'

Cheap date, anyone?

THERE'S one record Koh, who is single, would like to set straight: She is not an expensive date.

Perhaps it is the air of sophistication about her, or her immaculately manicured finger nails, replete with floral patterns and stick-on diamantes, that gives men this impression.

'I don't drink, so that's already cheap. I don't eat expensive food. The simple things in life will make me happy. Just pamper me, lah,' she says, laughing.

A self-confessed foodie and 'good cook', she says 'a lot of guys in Singapore are very frightened of me and the first thing they say is that I'm expensive to upkeep'.

Her fame, she reveals, seems to have its downsides, and most of her ex-boyfriends have been non-Singaporeans.

Her last relationship ended three years ago, with a man from Hong Kong she had dated for six months.

But settling down is not on her list of priorities - her family, God and her two Maltese dogs, Mr Muffles and Ruby, are.

After living on her own for 20 years, she has now moved back to live with her parents in their flat in Everton Road, and makes an effort to accompany her mother to Catholic mass every Sunday.

For her, returning to acting is something she may do when she feels strong enough, or when the right role comes along.

Musician Dick Lee, 50, who has known Koh since they were teenagers, says: 'She's a survivor, always managing to get back on her feet. And I've never known her to be an actor only. She's moved on and that's one of the most amazing things about her.'

At the end of the day, she's still the same fun-loving woman who is prone to doing things like buying a black satin tuxedo vest for Mr Muffles' second birthday a year early.

And she remains at the ready with punchlines.

She quips: 'An old friend wanted us to go climb a mountain to celebrate turning 50, but I said 'no thanks'. The most I'll do is see her at base camp.'