The great and the good (and me and my friend) were out in force last night at a glittering black tie do in the Langham Hotel for a Hong Kong Society event with Lord Patten of Barnes being “moderated” by Sir David Tang as special guests.
Lord Patten was the last Governor of Hong Kong and is now the Chancellor of Oxford University and Chairman of the BBC Trust. David Tang is best known as the founder of the Shanghai Tang fashion chain. Neither of them need an introduction to a Hong Kong audience, but it was the first time they’d been on stage together – and quite frankly it didn’t really work. Chris Patten would have done a better job without the aggressive questioning style of David Tang because his style was relaxed and easy with lots of amusing anecdotes to listen to whereas David Tang appeared to feel his role was to trip him up wherever possible.
“Life is a predicament rather than a series of challenges” said Lord Patten – what do you think that means?
He described his time in Hong Kong with his family as being the best five years of his professional life – partly because of the strong community ties that supported his staunch Catholic beliefs.
“Are you conscious that people call you arrogant?” asked David Tang, just after Lord Patten had told a funny story about Dame Edna Everage aka Les Patterson coming to stay at Government House – the room fell silent. Inappropriate question, especially coming from a man with the plummiest accent I have ever heard who writes the most absurd column for the Financial Times about manners that I have ever seen….once the talk was over David Tang opened up the debate to the guests and gave them a chance to ask questions “but if your question is stupid I will stop you” and the first woman to ask a question couldn’t even get the question out before he’d cut her off mid-flow and told her to put it in writing. Is that really the job of a moderator?
“Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently” was one of the questions to Lord Patten from a member of the audience, “married my wife earlier” he said. HOW LOVELY IS THAT?
Another question he was asked was whether he would advise a young person to go to Oxford to read History of Art or get going on the ladder of life straight away in Hong Kong – judging by his answer, it sounded like he would always recommend indulging in the glorious three years of university before getting on with earning a living, but what he did specifically say was that his main bit of advice to any young person would be to “never be bored and always do what you want to do because you are going to be doing it for an awfully long time and the more interests the better. The real cardinal sin is to make the most of your talents and never be bored”.
