Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Peter Drucker's The Effective Executive are books usually recommended to chief executives and top officials. But for a man of Patrick Ho Chi-ping's intellectual calibre, I would instead venture something different: a Sesame Street children's movie called Elmo Saves Christmas.
The secretary for home affairs suggested this week that the Cheung Chau bun scramble, to be staged on Monday after an interruption of 27 years, could be held all year round as a tourist attraction. A specially designed scaffold has been built for the contest to enhance safety. Instead of steamed buns, climbers may be rewarded with 'cakes or dolls'.
While the age-old tradition is a quasi-religious event, Dr Ho thinks that it could be staged as a sporting challenge. The annual ritual, banned in 1978 after one of the three towers collapsed, injuring more than 100 climbers and onlookers, used to be the highlight of an annual festival to appease the dead.
But never mind that, says Dr Ho. 'We can hold the bun scramble all year round, if the reaction is good and members of the public show strong interest in the upcoming bun-scrambling competition,' he said on a radio programme. 'We can allow participants to climb up the tower and grab cakes or dolls. We believe these kinds of new sports events would bring business opportunities to Cheung Chau and boost its tourism industry.'
I would never have thought that Elmo and Dr Ho had so much in common.
In the movie, now on DVD, the little furry red monster saves Santa Claus, who was stuck in his chimney. So Santa grants him three wishes. Elmo uses one to make every day Christmas. You can guess the rest. No one has time to go to work; children have no school to go to; the Christmas carol chorus is hoarse from all the singing; and everyone else on Sesame Street is exhausted from so much Christmas shopping.
Near the end, there is a nice little tune sung by Santa. It goes something like this: