A long-delayed Lunch Date reunion

Eat, Bulaga! is undeniably the all-time king of noontime shows and it may take perhaps another century or maybe a whole millennium before another program of its genre is able to match its success.

There was a time, however, when Eat, Bulaga! squared it off and was, in fact, overtaken (although only for a short while) by Lunch Date, which aired on GMA 7 from 1986 up to 1993.

A few weeks ago, some of the Lunch Date hosts and their former boss, Wilma Galvante, who overturned the program into a quality show, had a reunion at my house.

Why my house? Well, I was a Lunch Date fan, the hosts are my friends and everyone was curious what became of my house after Typhoon Milenyo (it was eventually redone by Tats Manahan to my satisfaction).

The reunion was actually hatched when Louie Heredia started cooking paella professionally (for orders, call tel. no. 426-6346) and wanted his friends to taste it (even his callos is the best). However, we put it off for the longest time — until he bumped into Wilma Galvante (now GMA senior vice president for entertainment) at the premiere night of The Promise and the two of them firmed up plans for a get-together.

No, it wasn’t really a Lunch Date reunion in the beginning, except that the people we wanted there all turned out to be part of Lunch Date: Tina Revilla, Randy Santiago and his wife, the former Marilou Coronel, and Toni Rose Gayda.

If it was going to be a Lunch Date reunion, we thought of inviting as well the other Lunch Date alumni — but that was going to be one long list considering the fact that it began with former Sen. Orly Mercado, Rico J. Puno, Chiqui Hollmann-Yulo and Toni Rose and ended with Rustom Padilla and Ai-Ai de las Alas. In between, there were Keno, Pilita Corrales, Lito Pimentel, Verni Varga, Monsour del Rosario and even Mahal.

But do we want Mahal there? Personally, I didn’t mind because I’m sure she eats very little. The problem was finding the others and working around their schedule. I know, for instance, that Chiqui lives in Pasig — in San Antonio Village, a barangay so rich that it has its own fire station. But how do we find her there? To get through her, I have to bother Ricky Reyes, and I don’t have his number. I can get that from Aster Amoyo, but I don’t have her number either because my cellphone was stolen last year and my entire directory was listed there.

We decided to keep this get-together small therefore and even that wasn’t easy because everyone had something else to do (Randy directs the sitcom Aalog-alog for ABS-CBN).

Basically, it was Louie who was in-charge. It was going to be potluck and he gave the assignment to everyone.

It turned out to be the least successful of all the dinners I hosted at home. Louie — the chef — manned the kitchen and everyone helped put the food into the proper chafing dishes. Tina — upon seeing the china and flatware — automatically set the table and put everything in its proper place. Randy and Marilou were also very helpful — running back and forth to the kitchen even in the middle of dinner to fix another bowl of greens (I don’t particularly like salad, except for the one they made at home) and fetch yet another bottle of wine (we consumed a lot!).

It was my first time to meet in person Marilou, a former commercial model, and she turned out to be wonderful and pleasant company (Randy is lucky to have her). She still looks stunning and in shape — thanks to the pilates classes she and Randy (who is very trim) attend regularly.

Over dinner, they talked about the good old days, while I listened intently and — as the Lunch Date chronicler — managed to correct little factual details along the way since I know the show’s history.

The fun part was recalling the booboos they made on air and nobody was surprised when it turned out that it was Toni Rose who had a monopoly of on-air fumbles. Wilma Galvante, for instance, recalled how Toni Rose — breaking into a commercial gap — once said: "Huwag kayong babalik, aalis kami."

And what about the time when an organized group complained to the station after Toni cracked a joke that didn’t sit well a large foreign community residing in this country? Toni Rose swore on my dining table that it was an honest mistake — and we believed her because she is one of the very few TV hosts who try not to offend the sensibilities of guests and especially the viewers.

But her most classic mistake is something I will not even repeat here — and I heard and saw that myself when it was committed in 1987.

For all that faux pas, look at Toni now. She is still one of the most loved personalities on TV today and we laugh and are charmed with everything she does on camera.

An hour or so before midnight, Tina’s now 22-year-old son Gio (the one who starred with her in those TV commercials) arrived to pick up Mom. Dear mother, however, was still having the time of her life and we asked Gio (now studying to be a pilot) to join us and the boy blended right in (he is a very good kid and makes his parents proud).

At way past midnight, there were still stories to tell and recount, but Tina had to bring her father, former matinee idol Armando Goyena, to Tagaytay at 5 a.m. (I don’t know if she still bothered to sleep).

Oh, but it was such a fun reunion and everyone felt that we should do it again. Maybe we should make it bigger next time and invite more people. We should be able to locate Chiqui Hollmann by then. Perhaps even Mahal — if she’s not too busy getting embroiled in yet another scandal.