Alex Ng
Any rock fans who made it to the remarkable Guns N' Roses concert on Wednesday night might have noticed, amid the spinning wheels of flames and Axl Rose racing the length of the stage with his triumphant squeals of Paradise City, a woman standing at the rear of the audience with an enormous grin concealed under a baseball cap. Alex Ng was enjoying one of the few live concerts she has not worked on in Hong Kong over the past decade. The hard-edged production director for Hong Kong's leading event production and creative services company, International Fixer, is the unrecognised force behind Hong Kong's live-music scene, as well as many fashion shows, films and corporate events.
'I've not had a day off since the recession hit,' admits Ng, the day before the Guns N' Roses gig in her company's eccentric building on Aberdeen Street. The three-storey headquarters houses stylish graphic designers, a tattooed costume designer perched on the first-floor balcony, and a trapeze swinging invitingly from the high ceiling. ('A girl walked in off the street one day and said 'Here's a problem for you to solve',' recounts Ng. ' 'I have a trapeze and nowhere to practise.' It became quite clear to me that evening as I lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling . . . ')
The 36-year-old Eurasian, dressed in combats and cap, stares at me with a deadpan expression. 'We've been so busy,' she continues. 'It's kind of embarrassing because people around here are scraping for work. But we deal in the entertainment industry and people want to escape, they want to be entertained.'
Blessed with nerves of steel, Hong Kong's party specialist was born in London. She moved to Hong Kong at the age of four with her father - the renowned Hong Kong actor and club owner Richard Ng Yiu-hon - and her English, hairstylist mother. She attended Kowloon's King George V School and by the time she was 13, Ng was already hanging out with Andrew Bull, who would become a leading promoter in Hong Kong.
'Andrew was a radio DJ at RTHK at the time and we would go up there after school and try to get him to play the Jam or Madness,' Ng says. 'I first got to know him then.'
She left Hong Kong for a British boarding school, before heading to California with the aim of breaking into Hollywood. 'I went to UCLA to do film, but it was so boring I changed to world art and cultures,' says Ng, breaking into a cackle, 'which means I can hoola dance and I can do Javanese puppetry'.
On her return to Hong Kong, she promptly ran into Bull, who was becoming firm friends with her father. 'My father had opened Hong Kong's first karaoke bar and Andrew had the nightclub Canton next door - that whole Tsim Sha Tsui nightlife scene was kicking off at the time. He asked me to work as a production assistant for [rap duo] the Dream Warriors and then a Paul Simon tour that went into China.'
In 1991, she launched International Fixer with herself as a production director, and has since provided the technical support and creative services for such names as Ricky Martin, Elton John, David Copperfield, Tom Jones, Bob Dylan, Public Enemy, BB King, Bjork and Oasis. She organised the 1991 Wan Chai free music festival, which saw 20 bands unleashed in Southhorn Playground. The list goes on.
It may sound glamorous, but Ng claims quite the opposite. 'Don't make it sound like those events were mine,' pleads the tomboyish Ng. 'I just provide the service. The promoters get all the credit, they get all the money. We basically come with the food, we take care of the artist, we hire the AV screens, we get the sound and lighting men in.'
Ng is also the one who absorbs the stress. 'You're at the end of the line and you have to solve it,' she says. 'I'm a horrible person to work with. I shout at everyone, they're all intimidated by me. You're on an emotional roller coaster and if you're not careful you get very stressed.'
At this point the phone rings and the office jumps into action. There are rock stars to look after and Ng must lead the way. 'It's really just about helping people,' she says as she heaves the glass doors open. 'That's why we're based here on the street and not hidden up a lift. We are on the street, we're accessible and we're here to help.'
