Miss Clear

Is Thai actress 'Aum' Patcharapa a trouble-maker? That's the unfortunate image she is trying to face down since she and an actress friend confronted television presenter 'Khem' Tee Sip in a department store carpark - a negative persona which a kathoey friend, perhaps unwittingly, has now reinforced.

According to kathoey Helen, her friend Aum (อั้ม พัชราภา) is 'Miss Clear' - the one on whom friends can call for help when they get into difficulty, and who can be relied upon to sort out people who are causing them problems.

Helen (wearing cream) has just written a celebrity tittle-tale pocketbook in which she calls Khem Ti Sip (ข็ม กฤตธีรา อินพรวิจิตร) an unflattering name (without identifying her explicitly).

She has also spoken to the media about several incidents in which she or mutual friends called on Aum to sort out little problems on their behalf. Aum, she says, is always willing, as she cares about her friends a great deal.

Last month Aum joined her friend, May Feuangarom (or Fuengarom- เมย์ เฟื่องอารมณ์), in the Emporium carpark after May found a Mini Cooper car there which she knew belonged to her.

Unknown to May, the man who bought the car in her name, boyfriend 'Noom' Kanchai, had lent the car to his former girlfriend, Khem Ti Sip, who left it in the Emporium carpark that day while she did a little shopping.

When Khem returned for the car, the two girls demanded she hand it over. While Khem later denied initial reports that they assaulted her, the impression remained that the two actress friends ganged up on Khem, and used unpleasant language and physical coercion to get her to part with the car.

The actress friends were joined at the scene by Aum's male driver, and male manager. Aum (pictured wearing black) and her helpers just happened to be at the same store for a social function.

In truth, it was not Aum's fight - but her friend May, after finding the car, called and asked her to join her in the carpark, to lie in wait for whoever left it there.

The pair tried to force the car door open, and demanded Khem leave the vehicle. Aum told Khem she had a nerve driving someone else's car - and while she was not using harsh language, stood at the scene filming everything on her cellphone camera.

So, another case of Aum stepping in to 'clear' a problem on behalf of her friends?

Helen says she has known Aum for about 10 years. Aum, she says, likes mixing with kathoey (ladyboys) - and if they went out socially, would always be at the forefront of their 'team' (gang?). Aum lead the pack, while Helen scuttled along in the rear.

If a friend gets into trouble, even at 3 or 4 in the morning, Aum would be there. She recalls an incident in which a friend of Aum's lost her lover after a third party snatched him or her away.

Helen doesn't say, but I think we can assume it was a girl who snatched away the boyfriend of a female friend.

The girl called Aum, who went along to talk to the girl who snatched the boy away. 'She didn't hit her - she just negotiated. She said, ''The girl whose man you took is a friend of mine, na...'' '

Aum was already a celebrity by this stage, but cared less about preserving her image than helping a friend in need, says Helen.

In another incident, Helen argued with a man she was seeing. The young man, who was living with his parents, refused to answer her calls. Helen did not want to visit him at his home, as that would give the game away: his parents would learn that their son had been seeing a kathoey.

What did she do? Helen called 'Miss Clear', who went around to the young man's house instead, for a little talk.

On other occasions, Helen herself might have caused a problem with a man. She would say nothing to Aum, but she would get to hear about the impasse, and criticise the young man for his poor behaviour - only to learn later that it was Helen who had started it all, not him.

Readers who left messages in response to this story, published in the Manager newspaper, questioned whether this was true friendship, or whether Aum was merely a trouble-maker.

Aum herself appears to acknowledge as much: in the aftermath of the carpark stand-off, which made front-page headlines in the tabloids for days, Aum lost advertising work worth millions of baht.

'Who wants a fighter as a presenter?' she said of her own actions, before adding that advertisers were likely to come back once initial misunderstandings about the incident (that force was used) had been cleared up.

She denied she and May had staged the scene in the carpark to lie in wait for Khem. 'If we had staged it, we would have called the media or the police. The images I took on my cellphone - they rock this way and that because I was eating sausages on a stick at the time,' she says.

Another Manager reader says Aum comes across as a bully-girl, but at least is honest, and direct - unlike Khem, who cared more about spinning an image for herself.