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Victoria Finlay

ACTOR Pierce Brosnan says he has not been recognised once during the three days he has spent in Hong Kong.

  Not because people here would not usually recognise the man who will play the next James Bond, but because he has kept the beard and moustache grown for his most recent role, Robinson Crusoe.

  ''I was just saying to a friend that after all this time I seem to have got it right. No need to put on sunglasses or a baseball cap, just a goatee beard and a moustache and nobody recognises me,'' he said.

  The disguise will stay for his role in the Alistair Maclean movie Nightwatch, being filmed here next week, but Brosnan confirmed he would be clean-shaven as Bond in the new 007 movie Goldeneye - for which the filming has been delayed until January.

  ''There seems to have been a certain ethic established over the years that Bond shouldn't have a beard.''   Brosnan, who has just returned from Papua New Guinea, appeared neither shaken nor stirred as he recounted the various disasters that happened during the two-month Robinson Crusoe shoot.

  ''Everything that could go wrong probably did.

  ''The first director had an accident and had to be airlifted out when he fell down some steps on the set.''   The Miramax people were seriously considering cancelling the whole film, Brosnan said, but a second director was flown in at the last minute to fill in and deal with angry villagers who rebelled against the film crew and threatened to close the whole place down.

  ''We gave them cakes and rice and smoked mackerel and they calmed down. It was understandable, they had never experienced film people before.''   He himself sprained his ankle and found his fingers had gone septic, although he said these were minor inconveniences which didn't interrupt filming.

  While in Hong Kong he, a female companion and his 10 year-old son Sean - who took the part of a cabin boy in Crusoe - have so far spent the time relaxing, watching home movies from Papua New Guinea, and finding to their surprise that Remington Steele, one of Brosnan's early starring roles, was still being shown on TV.

  A trip to Toys R Us in Causeway Bay yesterday resulted in bags of toys - ''noisy things, electric things'' - being brought back to decorate the floor in their suite at the Regent hotel, and Brosnan said trips to Ocean Park and Macau were definitely on the cards.

   for the rest of the week.



007's licence to thrill comes to a hairy end