Idol pursuits

JOHN LENNON famously proclaimed in 1966 that the Beatles were 'bigger than Jesus'. Nicholas Tse Ting-fung can make similar claims with more scientific justification. A City University poll of students recently found the actor and musician was the biggest male idol in Hong Kong, coming fourth in the top 10 list, while God could only squeeze in ninth.

On the mainland, Tse is the biggest name in show business, ranking fourth in the student icon stakes behind the rather less sexy names of Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong and Bill Gates. All this at the age of 21. It's no wonder Hong Kong's rebel with a cause has been busy shaking off the paparazzi moments before we meet discreetly at JJ's in the Grand Hyatt, which is closed at the time. 'Just look at the newspaper today, the paparazzi down there . . . it's another big day today,' Tse snorts derisively of the media salivating over his love life. What the snappers and scribes in hot pursuit want to know is whether Tse has split with diva Faye Wong, 11 years his senior, and taken up with 21-year-old local movie and pop star Cecilia Cheung.

Photographs of him with his arm around Cheung in Bangkok had been published that morning and a few days before, he had crashed his Ferrari (not for the first time) by yanking on the handbrake with the press pack hot on his wheels after he and Cheung had been spotted together. Rumours about the pair have abounded since he visited her in hospital in January after she had fractured her spine during a charity stunt.

It's a question I'm bound to ask too, but not yet. Tse appears tense, although as relaxed as you'd expect just a few hours before facing the flashbulbs again at the premiere of his new movie Tiramisu, in which he plays a deaf musician whose girlfriend comes back from the dead for love. Removing his sunglasses, he orders a Coke and lights the first of several Marlboro cigarettes. A heavy smoker, constantly cast as the rebel in films, swearing at reporters and badmouthing the Canto-pop scene, Tse has always been the bad boy to the local press.

The son of famous parents - 1960s movie stars Patrick Tse Yin and Deborah Lai - Tse was booed on stage and savaged by critics when he began performing aged just 15. And when he smashed guitars on stage during concerts a couple of years ago, he was denounced as a danger to children. 'Westerners have seen a lot of crashing guitars by Kiss, AC/DC, Kurt Cobain. They throw themselves into the drums,' says Tse. '[What I did] was really minor stuff. But in Hong Kong they don't ask you why you do it. They will judge that you're throwing a spaz, you're mad, you're crazy, not because it's wrong but because they've never seen it before.'

So why did he do it? 'My guitars were second-hand and when I was playing a solo my producer told me not to because it was out of tune. I was kind of mad. It wasn't a showmanship thing, it was a feeling thing.'