Hindi cinema copied his scenes

Cho, who has acted in 89 movies, has starred along with ‘Makkal Thilagam’ MGR, ‘Chevalier’ Sivaji Ganesan, ‘South Indian James Bond’ Jai Shankar, Superstar Rajinikanth and Padmashri Kamal Haasan. He made his debut in 1963 in the Sivaji-starrer Paar Magale Paar as a comedian.  Born as Srinivasa Iyer Ramaswamy, he earned the prefix ‘Cho’ from his popular bike mechanic character in Petralthan Pillaiya , directed by A Bhimsingh. From then on, he was called ‘Cho’ Ramaswamy. Many scenes in Hindi films have been directly borrowed and plagiarised from sequences of Cho’s performances in his Tamil movies. The sequence in Adimai Penn in which ‘Cho’ changes the various glasses of juices kept while narrating a story to R S Manohar, by which the villains glass with poison gets mixed up, was borrowed in Andaz Apna Apna in 1994 where Aamir Khan foils plan of the villains. Cho and late Chief Minister Jayalalithaa have worked together in 19 films and also had been part of the same drama troupe, while he has shared screen space with late Manorama in 20 films. His career best performances were in Muhammad Bin Tughlaq, Thenmazhai, Ninaivil Nindraval and Bommalaatam (his magnum opus character Jam Bazaar Jaggu) among others. Cho’s performance as Rajinikanth’s friend in Adhisaya Piravi reintroduced him to the next-generation audience.