Pen friends

... Mad dogs and Englishmen Go out in the midday sun, The Japanese don't care to, The Chinese wouldn't dare to, Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly From twelve to one, But Englishmen detest a Siesta ...

THERE'S no knowing whether the words of his most famous song crystallised in Noel Coward's mind as he languished in his Peninsula bathtub or looked out across the harbour dreaming of suitable rhymes for his witty ditties. Still less do we know whether he actually penned the lines here. Perhaps it was at the Cathay Hotel in more cosmopolitan Shanghai, where he wrote his play Private Lives in a couple of days while down with a bout of 'flu.

... In Hong Kong they strike a gong and fire off the Noon-Day Gun ...

So the song goes on. One thing's for sure, this line did as much to put sleepy Hong Kong on the world map as Suzie Wong.

Not that Suzie would have stayed at The Pen, heaven forbid; the old Luk Kwok was her stamping ground. The famous Wan Chai hotel might have made the setting for a Broadway show and a Hollywood movie but it was the elegant hostelry on the other side of the harbour that attracted the stars, the rich and the famous.

In 1936, Charlie Chaplin disembarked from a cruise liner without fuss, or entourage. He had booked a two-bedroom suite because, he explained, 'I snore and my wife hates it'. Music maestro Arthur Rubinstein used to reside at The Pen before World War II and gave a concert in the Great Ballroom, then on the sixth floor. Frank Sinatra preferred the privacy of his own room, tipping room-service waiters $50 whether they were bringing a full dinner or a glass of water.