The most disgusting part? Wearing a bikini all the time, having to flaunt my body onstage and at press conferences.' Lee Yee-man, the precocious, 17-year-old winner of Super Manager, otherwise known as the Miss AV Contest recently broadcast on ATV Home, sits in television star Eric Tsang Chi-wai's cafe in Causeway Bay, sipping a carrot juice, rolling her sparkling eyes ... and scowling as she recalls the indignities of Hong Kong's most notorious beauty pageant.
Known to friends as lian mui, or 'young chick', doe-eyed Lee could handle performing grisly stunts such as eating grasshoppers, lizards and deep-fried scorpions for the camera. The bitchy, headline-grabbing contestant catfights, embroidered by the press, hardly bothered her. Having to do it all semi-naked was what she found humiliating.
After four months on air, the 12-programme series, broadcast in a primetime, 9.30pm slot most Saturdays, and embroiled in controversy from day one, ended recently. The show's unofficial name, an abbreviation of Miss Adult Video, led many viewers to believe it was a contest to find potential pornographic movie stars. But they soon discovered the title was one of many manipulative and cynical ploys to boost ratings. To stand out from the crowd of beauty pageants that crowd Hong Kong screens, Miss AV's 15 bikini-clad beauties were encouraged to grimace while drinking wine containing dead field voles, and shriek when forced to handle snakes and toads. But at least they wore substantial clothing - helmets and padding - for that segment of the show in which they were encouraged to batter each other, gladiator-style, in the taekwondo ring.
And the gimmicks worked. Though failing to reach the heady broadcasting heights of ATV's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, which has racked up a following of 1.8 million square-eyed viewers, Miss AV reached a substantial 450,000 people with its bizarre mixture of flesh and flash, funny and cringeworthy. Its success can be largely attributed to - many would say blamed on - the tabloid press, which never tired of printing sensational snippets about contestants.
They relished the fact that Chan Kam-mei, who didn't qualify for the final, had taken part in a pornographic talkshow and divulged that she had had more than 10 partners; that 24-year-old Crystal Zhong Chun-fei, alias Fei Fei, melodramatically announced she would kill herself if she failed to win; and that another contestant's mother had huge debts.
But as the show reached fever pitch, the furore surrounding it grew. Former Miss Hong Kong winner Mary Pandora Cheung and former Miss Asia-Pacific Lai Yin-san expressed their dismay, while legislator and chairman of the Hong Kong Teachers' Association, Cheung Man-kwong, condemned the show as the 'cheapest of the cheap'. Analysing the paparazzi's fascination with the programme, Guangzhou newspaper Yangcheng Wanbao commented: 'The reporting ... is so vivid it makes you puke up your rice.'
