Lunch With Sumiko When you lose, your ego I's deflated

Norwegian chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen tells executive editor Sumiko Tan how it's hard for top players to be good friends with rivals chasing the same victories.

"Can one of you say something funny? Any Singaporean jokes?"

We look at each other, stumped. Not a single joke comes to mind.

"Like, who would you make jokes about here?" Carlsen cajoles. "Malaysians? Indonesians? Because Norwegians, we make jokes about Swedes and Danes," he laughs.

I rack my brain but cannot think of anything and steer him to other topics instead.

Is pink your favourite colour, I ask, gesturing at his crisp linen shirt.

Nah, he says, it is probably his only shirt in this colour.

You must be used to the camera as you have modelled before, I venture. The grandmaster, who is about 1.78m tall, was once famously the face of Dutch fashion brand G-Star RAW "Long time ago," he laughs. "Different life."

Carlsen's easy demeanour is a far cry from when he arrived an hour earlier for the interview on Nov 24.

I had arranged the lunch through his girlfriend, Ms Ella Malone, who sees him off with a kiss at the entrance of Summer Pavilion, a Cantonese restaurant at The Ritz-Carlton Millenia Singapore where they are staying.

She heads off for lunch with friends. He follows me to our private dining room looking like someone being dragged to the dentist.

Ms Malone had told me that 45 minutes would be about right for the interview. When I check with Carlsen, he says, decisively: "Let's try to do half an hour."

I suppose facing a reporter and camera crew on a Sunday afternoon cannot be high on anyone's list of favourite things to do. But such is the burden of being the most famous player on the chess circuit.

For the first 10 minutes, the 34-year-old grandmaster is polite but fidgets and looks resigned to his fate.

"This is my only commitment today," he says when I inquire about his day's programme. "Otherwise I will try to, you know, be a tourist a little bit."