YES The mother of a friend of mine happened to sit next to the Pieman at the Sevens last year. For those of you who may be recent arrivals in Hong Kong, the Pieman is a 36-year-old foreign currency dealer in London called Martin Hollis. He has been coming to the Sevens for the last five years and he is famous for one thing: he has an enormous stomach which he likes to fill with pies and beer. You will probably see photographs of it wobbling gently, like a gigantic pale egg, at some point this weekend.
Disgusting? Well, actually, my friend's mother was charmed. She thought he was delightful - a family man who went through the motions of his peculiar fame with good humour. When the Pieman's Chant reverberated around the stadium, he stood up to take a bow (wobble, wobble), sat down again and mildly continued conversing about his two children. He seemed amused and puzzled by the adulation, in roughly equal parts.
What does this say about Hong Kong? Well, it's certainly fair to observe that the Pieman's fanclub is almost exclusively expatriate. Perhaps this is why the concept of face doesn't seem to enter into proceedings: it's all about tummy. And foolhardiness. I mean, would you eat scores of meat pies with Mad Cow Disease and vicious strains of E.coli on the rampage? Me neither. But most of all it's about harmless eccentricity.
I like eccentrics and we don't get enough of them in Hong Kong. You've no idea how hard it is to be a journalist in a city where people rear back in horror at the notion of being different. Take it from me, encouraging most interviewees to say something mildly colourful is a fretful business (but I soldier bravely on, dear reader, for your sake). Memorable characters are evidently so thin on the ground that everyone has seized on the Pieman and elevated him to a status at which even he blinks.
And he's the perfect anti-status symbol in a city obsessed with perfection. Does Martin Hollis strike you as the kind of man who works out three times a week so that he can fit into his $10,000 suit, leap into his sleek, foreign car and seduce the sultry woman who happens, conveniently, to be clinging for dear life to the bonnet? He won't be spending this weekend mooching around Pacific Place, fantasising about designer watches, hand-tooled shoes and all the consumer trimmings which the rest of us have been suckered into believing are the essentials of life. He'll be doing what he loves best, which happens to be watching rugby (hmm, another idiosyncrasy in my book). And giving pleasure to the fans. The Urban Council should invite him back to the stadium for the handover - no noisy stage show, no lasers, just a happy, wobbly, Falstaff who's enjoying himself.
NO We are about to put the power of the media to the test. Today is the last day of the Rugby Sevens in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Stadium will be crammed to capacity and somewhere in the midst of it all there will be the wheezing bulk of the Pieman, gut out, glistening with sweat and burping fatly into his pitcher of lager. They say the Pieman is a character, a part of the Sevens. I'll tell you what the Pieman is - a fat bastard. Nothing more, nothing less. I have a plan to let him know this in no uncertain terms.