IN A shabby backroom at ATV on Broadcast Drive, Coco Kung sits defensively, exchanging frosty looks with her fellow beauty queens. It is 4.30 pm on a rainy Friday evening and, in one hour, Kung and her cohorts must leave for The Regent where ATV is hosting a cocktail party.
Kung has to look like a star. She sits, harshly lit, in front of a grimy mirror, surrounded by stained sponges, clumpy brushes, tubes of foundation and all the paraphernalia of someone for whom looking good is a ritual of retouches. A make-up artist fusses around her, smoothing a wrinkle here, pencilling an eyelid there.
A few months ago, Kung was just another ageing wannabe when she announced her decision to participate in the 1995 Miss Asia pageant at the unprecedented age of 47. When she made it to the top five in the August 13 finale - carrying off the Media Award for press popularity in the process - a Chinese tabloid sensation was born. As the latest inductee to Hong Kong's coterie of fabulous nobodies, Kung's life has become a whirlwind of cover stories, photo shoots and auditions. She has sprung from nowhere to be seen suddenly at the best balls, the swishest soirees. She is portrayed, as much by those caught up in her publicity orbit as by Kung herself, as a gifted TV presenter and talented actress.
But while the local press hints at her shady past - there are dark mutterings of cosmetic surgery, divorce, abandoned children, imprisonment for business fraud - the slick of innuendo and tittle-tattle that follows in her wake around town is less ambiguous. 'Is that what she's calling herself now?' groans one socialite when Kung's name is mentioned. 'I used to know her as Mimi Chanel.' 'It's vulgar,' sniffs another. 'She'll do anything for attention.' Kung herself does little to turn the tide of speculation, insisting to reporters that she suffers from amnesia and can remember very little about her past. The only topic on which she is prepared to expand is her immediate future. 'I want to be taken seriously,' she says, delivering the ultimate cliche with a confident smile. 'I am very talented, confident of my abilities. Everyone will soon see what I can do.' She has just signed an exclusive contract with ATV, organiser of the Miss Asia beauty pageant, which clearly recognises star material when it sees it. Later this month, she will play a central character in the station's controversial Judge Pao and is already discussing her first role - as a Ching Dynasty magician - in a feature film.
'I've been working in beauty pageants for six years and I've seen a lot of things, but Coco's really special,' says Grace Lee, assistant manager of ATV's beauty-pageant department. 'Everywhere we go, people crowd around her because they want to see her. Sometimes she says things that are strange and shocking but we want to build her public image because we think she is a very talented lady. She is educated, speaks Mandarin very well and is a quick thinker.' More than just her age, it is the persistent rumours of a scandalous past which makes the enigma surrounding ATV's menopausal protege all the more potent. Yet, according to Lee, the Chinese press is less interested in digging the dirt on Kung these days than on following her career. 'Coco loves reporters,' she says. 'She knows they have helped her become successful. She says her latest interest is giving interviews.' Is that so? Kung brushes aside questions she chooses not to answer, deftly pulling the conversation back on course to her current life and career. In halting English, she concedes that she has never married, is not a mother and that she was born in China, has lived in Paris and now makes her home in Hong Kong. Next question, please.
Others follow about the whereabouts of her family, what she did before she became a celebrity - anything that will shed a little light on her life. But it appears that she's had enough. 'You will have to wait and read the book. I'm writing an autobiography,' she announces proudly.
