The Sinhala Bonsoir opened the floodgates and brought in a whole new generation of viewers. It took the programme to an entirely different platform and France entered thousands of homes in rural Sri Lanka. The feedback was very encouraging to say the least.
The monthly Bonsoir Quiz gave us a healthy and vibrant interaction with our thousands of viewers spread across the country. We often posed a very simple question based on the programme and requested viewers to send their answers on postcards.
Bonsoir used the address of the Embassy of France where we were housed – 89, Rosmead Place, Colombo 7. Whenever the chauffeur went to the Cinnamon Gardens Post Office to collect mail for the Embassy, he collected ours too. The English Bonsoir had a cool 500 postcards per month!
The Sinhala Bonsoir began its own independent quiz, which I thought was logical. We shared the same address and this was when the logistical nightmare began. The numbers kept increasing by the day and the chauffeurs kept complaining that they couldn’t carry the load.
The icing on the gateau was when we reached an average of 5000 postcards per month on the Sinhala Bonsoir alone, and the French Embassy decided it was high time that Bonsoir (English and Sinhala) got its own PO box number!
Storing these 5000+ postcards until the respective draws were done was another issue. The small Bonsoir team spent many painful hours bundling them into lots of 50s for convenience. 
We finally got a really HUGE cardboard box (which had once contained a jumbo television set) and this became the Bonsoir Quiz Box. It was placed right next to my table. The postcards came straight from the Embassy’s Peugeot in mail bags and were virtually poured into “The Box”.
“The Box” was large enough to conceal a crouched adult. And this is where Yasmin Rajapakse, the prankster in the team, got ideas to play Jack-in-the-Box. She chose her unsuspecting victims one by one and they in turn became her accomplices. I was the first!
One day I walked into the studio and customarily passed the closed box when she suddenly s-c-r-e-a-m-e-d and jumped out of it, like a banshee out of hell! It was agonising. Then followed the rest of the team on different days, one by one, including Komi Mendis, who also both produced and presented Bonsoir.
We bid our time as Yasmin collected victims, one by one, until there were no more. It was time that we got back at her and so we hatched our plot. We invited the Ambassador at that time, Jean François Bouffandeau, to come (downstairs) to the studio to check some video clippings from the French Foreign Ministry. We lured Yasmin into the box saying that we were expecting one of the chauffeurs.
And so with Yasmin crouched in “The Box”, waiting to scream and pounce on the “chauffeur”, in walked the Ambassador whom I guided and positioned near “The Box”. We kept him there, talking to him and engaging his attention while poor Yasmin lay crouched inside all the time. She dared not come out until he left. His Excellency left half an hour later!
Half an hour is a very L-O-N-G time when you are crouched and trapped squatting in a box with the lid closed! Believe me!
