In the bad old days before Kaun Banega Crorepati (2000), Jaya Bachchan used to help out Subroto Roy at his sprawling office in Goregaon, Mumbai, and would greet people with her right hand over the heart in the patented Sahara pranam.

Amitabh Bachchan has often refer- red to the pre-KBC phase as one where they were deep in debt after the losses notched up by their ambitious AB Corp. But at no time was there a discernible depletion in his fan following, there was always a knot of people eager to catch his attention. One such person on Jaya’s team at Sahara was determined to muster the courage to go up and introduce himself to AB the next time he dropped in at their office. One day, when AB did arrive with his characteristically brisk, long stride, the man straightened his tie and ran up to meet him.

“Mr Bachchan, I work for your wife,” he began.

“So do I,” shot back AB as he walked off, without breaking his stride.

An absolute Big B moment, that dry spontaneous wit never deserting him.

Another time, in a car were AB, Vinod Khanna and two female journalists. When the two young women lavished attention on Khanna for his bespectacled look in Imtihan (1974), AB wondered aloud, “Has anybody here seen a film called Sanjog (1971)?” Everybody burst into laughter. AB too had famously worn spectacles on all its posters.

Apart from his undiminished popularity and renowned professionalism, it’s his deadpan humour that has stayed with AB, fluctuating fortunes having nothing to do with it. That way, humour of different hues has been a common trait with most October-born film stars. Shammi Kapoor and Amjad Khan (both on October 21) too had heaps of it.

After a mental check on which of the older legends could have hosted KBC with the same air of authority and erudition, three names sprang to mind — Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor. While Dilip Kumar’s long pauses would’ve made him unsuitable for the part, Dev may have been a tad too westernised to connect with such warmth with participants from the interiors of India. Perhaps RK and Shammi Kapoor could’ve carried it off to some extent.

The one who definitely had it all was Ashok Kumar — knowledgeable, curious as a child, culturally pan-Indian with assorted sons- and daughters-in-law, multi-lingual (English, Hindi, Bengali), and a gifted rapper wrapped in a dignified personality that could sup with the elite as well as put an arm around his carpenter and chat with him without coming off as patronising. The same qualities make AB such a human host.

Topped with a comic touch. “Pump Patel” was what he had labelled Dr Patel, one of his sons-in-law, for the asthmatic pump he carried.

Dadamoni, as he was called, also had a wicked sense of humour, which could sometimes be bawdy. He’d crack up over my colleague Nalini’s name — it reminded him of his co-star Nalini Jaywant, with whom he was reported to have had a rollicking affair. He’d guffaw over another actress who made a desperate call to him when the filmmaker she was in bed with succumbed to a cardiac arrest “in the act”. When she turned up at the funeral looking quite puritanical in a pristine white sari, Ashok Kumar said he had a tough time holding back his laughter.

One of his favourite jokes was about a 75-year-old who complained to his doctor that he could no longer “perform” with his wife. When his doctor reminded him of his age, he complained, “But my neighbour who’s 80 says he’s still active.” The doctor sagely prescribed, “You also say it.” Dadamoni was himself in his 70s when he narrated it.

His October-born son-in-law Deven Verma, also a comedian in Hindi films, would say with a straight face, “Libra — we take liberties with bras.” However politically incorrect, there’s something special about the month of October.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author