A mate to remember
In a competition for the most unexpected press release to be sent to this newspaper, a recent fax bearing the announcement 'Playmate Visits Jumbo Kingdom For Her First Time Hong Kong Visit' would surely be a leading contender. It announced that Miss Audra Lynn Christiansen, Playboy's Playmate Miss October 2003, who was visiting Asia courtesy of Bally Gaming Systems, would be attending the soft opening of the Jumbo Kingdom Pier Plaza.
You may already be too dazzled by the proximity of the words 'playmate' and 'jumbo' in the same sentence to realise Jumbo Kingdom is what was formerly known as the Jumbo and Tai Pak floating restaurants in Aberdeen, owned by casino magnate Stanley Ho, which have now been regally amalgamated. My favourite word conjunction in the release concerned the Mocha Slot Hall in Macau, which Audra graciously opened on May 1 and which was described in a manner lesser PR souls might have hesitated to employ in this context as 'spanking new'.
The Jumbo opening took place last Sunday afternoon on the Shum Wan pier where a jumbo yurt had been erected. Members of the press were handed a psychic press release (Audra, we were told, had 'particularly enjoyed the sampan ride, a unique local experience, of sailing through the Aberdeen typhoon shelter' - a unique experience that had yet to take place) and instructed to take their seats in the full sun. In a reversal of the usual procedure this meant the panel, comfortably sitting in the shade, could watch the press being grilled. Never having seen a real Playmate in the flesh, or indeed in the magazine, I was curious to see how Audra measured up: 34C-24-34, according to her Playmate Data Sheet, which also said her big turnoff was 'being taken for granted'. You could see her point: there you are, doing your professional best, dressed as a bunny - bobtail, bowtie, crumpled ears clamped to your head - while the Hong Kong media are going ape taking photographs of Chua Lam, the gourmet who has a penchant for beautiful women. It's not that the Hong Kong media weren't interested in Audra but you couldn't say they were riveted: at some press conferences you never see the main attraction because he or she is smothered in cameramen. This wasn't a problem at Jumbo Kingdom. Audra sat in the shade looking generously blonde, a little tight-lipped, faintly uncertain and as dated a presence as, say, Richard Nixon - her scarlet bunny outfit as quaint, in its own way, as a Mao suit. Invited to share her thoughts and experiences of the approximately two hours she'd spent in Hong Kong, she gave a tremulous summation ('Hong Kong is absolutely beautiful, I can't get over it ... So, anyways, thanks for your hospitality!') and clumped off to the predestined sampan in a pair of red high-heeled shoes last deemed fashionable in about 1971.
The press followed in two sampans. While Audra was doing a Kate-Winslet-on-Titanic pose on the prow of the boat, the affable Daniel Cheng, Asian director of sales for Bally Gaming Systems (who assured me several times that he had never read Playboy, to which his friend, Lawrence Teo, business development manager of Mocha Slot, sitting alongside, jeered, 'Nice try, man'), mused, 'Bally paid an arm and a leg to get Audra here for the Macau opening.' Bally manufactures Playboy slot machines. Asked what makes Playboy slot machines different from any other fruit machine, Cheng said, 'It's what we call branded. The customers identify with Playboy. The slot game itself has Playboy bonus features.'
In other words, when you hit a winning combination, you're presented with a line of Playmates. Clothed or unclothed? Cheng, who is from Singapore, gave a polite cough. 'Well, in Macau, it's clothed. We do two versions. They wanted unclothed but the Macau Gaming Board thought it might be a little advanced at this point. But the European market will only have full nudity. Like in the magazine.' The magazine he hasn't seen? Cheng laughed, and Teo said, 'Playboy has less pornography now - so I've heard.'
'You might want to say,' said Cheng, peering into my notebook as we circled the typhoon shelter (Audra's scarlet ears twitching like a shipping beacon in the distance), 'that Mocha is considering a deeper relationship with Playboy. Playboy is big in China for merchandising. Mr Hefner himself has said it's his biggest market. They make a lot of clothes.'
In which case, Hugh Hefner, founder of an empire based on the unclad, either has a fine sense of irony or no sense of irony whatsoever. My betting - considering that was the point, along with sex, of the whole afternoon - is that it was the latter. Audra certainly sailed magnificently along