Remembering Jaspal Bhatti: The King of Comedy and ‘Misdirection’

The comedian kept viewers in the splits with his television series Flop Show.

Jaspal Bhatti’s laughter shows kept the Doordarshan viewers in splits over social ills or issues that would normally bring them to tears.

(Photo courtesy: India Today)

Satirist Jaspal Singh Bhatti touched a chord with the masses with his humorous take on problems plaguing the common man. In the no-cable-TV era when Doordarshan fare was lapped up by hungry viewers across India, the comedian kept viewers in the splits with his take on the problems of the common man.

He is most well known for his television series Flop Show and mini capsules Ulta Pulta which ran on DD, the national television network, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was also known as the "King of Comedy".

Unfortunately, the man who made us all laugh died in a road accident on 25 October 2012.

Here's remembering the laughter generating machine.

(With inputs from PTI)

(Video Editor: Purnendu Pritam)

(This story is from The Quint’s archives and is being republished to mark Jaspal Bhatti’s birth anniversary.)