This was fine in other markets where no one knew what she was saying, but Hong Kong's keen-eared parents were not fooled for a second. So talking Pos are off the shelves until the matter can be cleared up.

If it will help, I must throw open to the public my limited knowledge of the actress involved - Pui Fan Lee who plays Po.

She is not Hong-Kong born, as has been claimed elsewhere, but is the daughter of Hakka parents originally from the Tai Po area.

She made her first visit to Hong Kong in early 1994 to take part in the Fringe Festival in her one-woman show called Short, Fat, Ugly and Chinese.

The title is based on the words her ever-supportive mother used when told her daughter had been accepted by a prestigious London drama school.

'Why would they want you?' Mrs Lee apparently said.

'You are short, you're ugly and you are Chinese.' The performance was a minor hit in London's alternative theatre circuit, and a sell-out here, where her reminiscences about the cringing embarrassment of having to translate for her mother, of endless hideous lunches in Nottingham's Chinatown and the way she longed for an English name, like Jane, went down a real storm.

Lee off-stage is nearly as forthright.

She is also so bad at speaking Cantonese she didn't understand a word that was said to her. Hakka was the language her parents spoke at home, although rarely to her.

So if she does appear to be saying naughty things in Cantonese, it could well be because she is mispronouncing innocent phrases and being misunderstood.

Foreigners with white skin do this all the time, and few Hong Kong people are ever offended because they know no offence is intended.

It is only fair Lee gets the same consideration: she might look the part under that huge red outfit, but she is still basically a Nottingham girl who doesn't know her gau from her gau, or her fai di from her fatties.