peter lam yuk-wah

Peter Lam Yuk-Wah 'I WAS LATE that morning, I had a stomach problem. Normally I leave home at 6.20 am, and I arrive here at 6.30, maybe 6.40, but I was late. And when I was at Tolo Harbour, I received a message on my pager - the battery had run out in my mobile phone, so they paged me. And the message said, 'Albert has had an accident.' ' Thus, in his car, on the morning of August 19, Peter Lam Yuk-wah discovered Albert Cheng King-hon was not going to be at work that day. Cheng, as everyone now knows, was the host of Commercial Radio's Teacup In A Storm show until two men inflicted six chop wounds that Wednesday morning. Lam was his co-host, the stooge to Cheng's outrageousness and the butt of many, many jokes. Now the laughter is somewhat muted.

We met in the offices of Commercial Radio in Broadcast Drive where Lam still presents Teacup In A Storm every morning. There were several floral displays in the lobby which I assumed were part of a Cheng tribute but which turned out to be commemorating Commercial Radio's 39th anniversary. It was only 10 days after the attack so I was also expecting a high degree of vigilance but apart from a uniformed gentleman who had clearly bid farewell to his youth and agility many moons ago, security was non-existent.

'They're working on it,' said Lam when I raised this point. I'd have thought it a matter of some urgency and perhaps Lam, who tapped my business card endlessly - distractingly - on the surface of the desk throughout the interview, would be inclined to agree, but he merely added, 'I hope we don't need it anymore.' As often happens in real life, but would be too heavy-handed an observation for fiction, the conference room in which we sat talking was filled with boxes of a spray paint called Under Guard.

When Lam reached Broadcast Drive that morning, he still thought, confusedly, that Cheng had been in a car accident. 'The night before, he was going to the airport to pick up his wife and children and he was worried about parking out there and ... the moment I saw him I knew it was not an accident. There was blood all over the place. He looked so tired, so helpless, they were carrying him into the ambulance.' Then he went into the studio to do the show. 'I tried to tackle other subject matters. But there were faxes and phone-calls and people were mad because I didn't talk about what happened, people wanted to come on air to voice their feelings. I'd thought maybe that, as Albert was a colleague, we shouldn't manipulate the incident. And that as one of his best friends maybe what I said would be too personal.' While I was writing this down, someone came into the room and handed Lam a message. It was Cheng, ringing from his hospital bed for the second time that morning, and Lam hurried out to speak to him. When he returned, he said, 'This morning, we have some segments on the programme when Albert was talking about his feelings for his wife and children and it was very touching. We seldom see this side. But I think he has a strong will to survive.' Lam, too, is married, with a daughter, aged nine, and a son of 16. What about his will to survive? 'Of course I'm scared. If I had been there at the same time would I have been a target? Would I be brave enough to fight the gangsters with Albert?' As to suggestions in the Chinese media that the chopping may have been related to Cheng's business dealings and not his outspoken qualities as a broadcaster, Lam retorted, 'I tell everyone who asks whether Albert has financial difficulties that he gives me money. He knows that I'm broke and he says, 'Don't worry, pay me back later when you have the money.' The car I drive is a gift from him. He's a good guy.' The reason Lam is obliged to borrow money from Cheng dates back to a number of disastrous commercial ventures. The pair met when Lam was working with Selina Chow for a concert-promotion business called Brainchild. In 1983, Cheng rang up with an idea for expansion into North America, and although this never happened, the two men became friends. In the late 1980s, Lam persuaded Cheng to invest in a $20 million store in Causeway Bay which sold videos and CDs, and which was closely modelled on the Virgin Megastore concept. It failed after 18 months.

'It was an expensive lesson. Out of many, many shareholders, Albert lost the most. If anyone is going to be blamed for that, I'm the one. I was the initiator. We got big-headed.' Cheng is still a wealthy businessman, however, while Lam, who is currently vice-chairman of the Motion Picture Industry Association, appears to have lurched from crisis to crisis. 'I used to own a nice apartment, I used to have an Alfa Romeo sports car. That is past tense. I owned 15 per cent of a video company which was liquidated. And there have been legal cases against me. But I have projects ongoing, and maybe in a number of years I'll be able to pay back the money Albert has been [lending] me.' This could take a while. The pair are currently appealing against a recent court award of $80,000 to solicitor Paul Tse Wai-chun who instituted libel proceedings after comments about him on one show. 'Albert paid the $80,000,' Lam said. 'Half is mine, of course, but I haven't the money.' That's the least of his worries: the legal costs are estimated to be about $5 million, and that's before the appeal gets under way.

Given this extraordinarily fraught cocktail of borrowed money, litigation, professional jockeying for superiority ('Maybe Albert thought I was one of the few people he could openly bully on air' was Lam's telling comment on why he thought Cheng had asked him on the show three years ago) and now violence, it's a testimony to the friendship that it has survived at all. Chinese listeners apparently apply a metaphor to their relationship, describing Cheng as the flower and Lam as the petals of a lotus.