JEAN-MICHEL Jarre flew back to Paris yesterday having absorbed the painful lesson that the Hong Kong bureaucracy, like God, moves in a mysterious way.
He could hardly believe that one man (and he shook a single finger vigorously at Keeping Posted to make his point) could crawl out of the woodwork - let's face it, whoever heard of the mining department before its chief turned up at the Hong Kong Stadium- less than 24 hours before Jarre was due to take centre stage and stubbornly decimate his show and spoil the fun for the near 45,000 crowd.
''I shall never forget his name,'' fumed Jarre. ''Because of his refusal to compromise in any way what Hong Kong got was not a real Jean-Michel Jarre performance.
''The music, the lasers, the pyrotechnics - all three aspects together make up my show. With the fireworks being banned it virtually destroyed the concept I had spent many weeks devising.'' In fact, the telephone wires burned all the way to Government House as tycoon Allan Zeman - whose Arena Group brought Jarre over - led a vain bid to try and extricate the situation. But time ran out.
Jarre, who has entertained millions around the world with similar special effects without any hassles, told Keeping Posted that had it not been for the fact that the antediluvian regulations had been foisted on him at the last moment he would have pulledthe plug on the whole thing.
''I felt that it was better to resurrect what little we could of the show and go on so as not to disappoint the people of Hong Kong completely''.