[Ta Kung Pao, Wen Wei Po & The Sun 20/11/06]

Plethora of Stars Join Sir Run Run for TVB 39th Anniversary Extravaganza

A huge gathering of TVB's best joined together for the TVB 39th Anniversary Extravaganza show yesterday and at the helm were the Masters of Ceremonies - Liza Wang, Eric Tsang, Carol cheng, Nat Chan, Anna Yau and Amigo Chui. The show was kicked off with a lighting up ceremony led by TVB boss Sir Run Run Shaw, accompanied by Miss Hong Kong 2006 Aimee Chan and TVB Big Sisters Liza and Carol. The artistes then performed an opening number entitled 'Gathering of Stars at the Forefront' dressed in ancient, Nationalist and modern costumes.

TVB Treasure and veteran MC Lydia Shum is still recovering from her hospital stay, so she could only pass on her birthday wishes to TVB on the telephone. As soon as the call got through, you could hear her trademark laughter and she said with great vigour: "TVB Happy Birthday! Always at the front in its 39th year! Yeah! I hope TVB gets better and better day by day." Lydia also adds that TVB has forged a name throughout the world over the past 39 years and this is something to celebrate. She hopes that they will continue to strive for the best in the future and produce more high quality shows and she also wishes Sir Run Run good health and longevity.

In the 'Beautiful Big Sis Cooking' section, Carol, Liza and Nancy Sit entered the Beautiful Cooking Kitchen to cook a birthday banquet. Although they could not be described as clumsy, they still needed help from their four male assistants: Abalone (Roger Kwok), Ginseng (Kevin Cheng), Sharks Fin (Bosco Wong) and Fish Stomach (Ron Ng). Nancy's dish of Crab and Sharks Fin was suspected by Eric as being prepared in advance, to which Nancy responded: "You have never been in the kitchen, so don't say too much." The three judges Alan Tam, Nat Chan and Michael Hui were quite generous with their scores and Nat joked that after eating Nancy's dish, he had to go and let some fireworks off in the toilets, adding: "If your children eat this, they would never grow up!". Michael jeered that Liza's abalone was like tree bark and urged her seriously to go and learn to cook, laughing that the three big sisters' cooking was more like a diamond fashion show. When the ladies started to argue back, it was down to Amigo Chui to break up the fight.



Eric dressed up as Lydia for his performance in the show and led Lam Man Chung, Louis Yuen, Tang Chi Fung, Ram Tseung and other male artistes and a dance routine entitled "Sexy Males Fantasy Dance Troupe", where they all dressed up as sexy ladies for a song and dance item, even shaving their armpits for the act. Asked if he was afraid of making Lydia angry, Eric says: "How could she be angry? I feel that an Anniversary show cannot be without Lydia, so I asked to play her especially and called her to remind her to watch this part."



For the comedy sketch highlight of the show, it took the form of a "Jade Celebrity Hall", where Eric, Alan and Nat played visitors to a waxworks exhibition and the leading males and females had to play waxworks, whilst the 'visitors' did their worst to play tricks on them. Originally, Moses Chan and Bernice Liu were separate, but Bernice was carried over to Moses and positioned to lean against his chest and even to kiss each other. Alan gave Gigi Lai a fright when he threw out a fake cockroach and they also pulled away Kenny Wong's top, but when they did not reveal his muscles underneath, Eric took his trousers off instead. Fortunately, he stretched his legs apart to avoid them falling down completely. Alan then coloured in one of Roger Kwok's teeth and poked a pencil up his nose, whilst Bowie Lam was subjected to being sprayed with water and ink before being smeared with a mop by Eric. Nat then frightened Charmaine with something wriggling in a bag, making her take a step back and when he threw the bag at them, both she and Gigi jumped up and screamed. Eric even went as far as writing on Sonija Kwok's chest as he smiled to himself: "There is good texture here!" The 'waxworks' got their revenge on the visitors in the end but Alan and Nat ran away, leaving Eric trapped as everyone reaped sweet vengeance.

Despite being made the subject of the jokes, both Moses and Bernice said they did not mind at all and indicated that they did not kiss in the end because Moses had caught wind of this earlier, so he kept his mouth covered. Bernice says that as long as everyone is happy then that is most important, and for everyone to see her beautiful fingernails. Kevin had his nipple tweaked and had some rumours revealed by Nat and he laughs that this is the first time he has been tweaked on the nipple by a manand although it did not hurt, he was very shocked, but he was fine about this. He smiles that he wanted to take the razor and shave off Eric's eyebrow in revenge, but seeing him being surrounded, he gave up on that idea. For Kenneth Ma who had his forehead sprayed with paint, he said that some of it got into his eyes, but after putting some eyedrops in, he is fine and although he did then beat Eric with a plastic bottle, he felt that he was attacking the wrong person because it was Nat who did the deed originally.

The Grand Anniversary Draw also took place after several rounds of games including a miniature 'Deal or No Deal' with the top prize of $390,000 cash going to Yan Chi Keung, second and third prize of $39,000 going to Eddie Kwan and Vikki Tong.



Every year, the anniversary show is a time for the ladies to appear in their finest to contest their beauty and show off their jewels, At this year's event, the three female MC's were led by Liza Wang whose jewels were worth over $30 million and sponsored by Italian designer Damini, including a necklace from the Sophia Loren range mounted with 81 carats of diamonds on white gold and a bangle and ring set featuring 298.5 carats. Carol wore two sets of jewellery worth a total of $26 million that consisted of a 93.88 carat diamond necklace, earrings and ring set and a set bearing 65.7 carats of rubies and 149.04 carats of diamonds.

Charmaine's two sets of jewellery were worth a total of $9 million and Sonija Kwok wore a 50 carat diamond necklace worth $2.6 million, sponsored by Chow Tai Fook. Gigi Lai wore diamonds totalling 250 carats, worth $30 million to go with her white evening dress. Bernice's diamond earrings, watch and bracelet were worth $1 million and she also spent $5000 on six of her fingernails that featured the TVB logo. The men also did their part as Eric wore a diamond watch worth $1.6 million and Bosco wore a watch worth $800,000.

As the show opened, good friends Charmaine and Sonija were chatting away, leaving Shirley Yeung standing to one side. Aimee Chan seemed to disappear from Sir Run Run's side straight after the opening ceremony, but Carol and Liza showed their quick thinking as they rushed over to speak to him as Carol said: "Long Time No See" and Liza showed him the right direction to go.

The final rehearsals for the show took place at TKO TVB City in the afternoon and were attended by Carol, Eric, Yoyo Mung and Shirley Yeung who made the most of the final chance to practise their acts. The normally punctual Carol arrived late, but she denied this saying that she arrived at the time on her notice and she had been rehearsing into the earlier hours on the day before. She was confident about her cooking piece and says that she sees this as a job. Asked if she will ask boyfriend Lui Fong to try her food, she says there is no need because there are four males there to try it.

Shirley was asked about her boyfriend Gregory Lee's earlier remarks about her being overly sexy to make money and Shirley says that maybe he feels a little wary of this inside, but he understands that this is necessary for her work and she will try to cut down on sexy appearances in the future. She adds: "I have received a tax bill for a six figure sum this year and it is terrible! After winning an award, my wages have not gone up, so I am very good value for money!"

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[The Sun 20/11/06]

Aimee Chan Misses her Dogs

This year's Miss Hong Kong winners Aimee Chan, Janet Chow and Koni Lui are all dog-lovers and they took part in an animal charity event yesterday. Self-confessed dog fanatic Aimee hopes to set up her own charity to look after strag dogs. She also reveals that she has three dogs back home in Canada: "One is old and blind and I miss him very much. I often call home and talk to them and I once even flew all the way back to Canada just to see them. I hope that I can bring them all to Hong Kong."

Koni says that her brother who lives in Egypt has a dog and a cat, because cats are a sacred animal over there, so they are more popular than dogs.

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