Pop Stop

The 42nd Golden Horse Awards not only shone the limelight on award winners last Sunday, but also provided the local media with some juicy gossip to chew on.

Photographers focused on Taiwanese actress Suzanne Hsiao (蕭淑慎), whose pumped breasts were partially flopping outside the dresses she wore on the red carpet at both the Golden Horse Awards and the Golden Bell Awards (金鐘獎) which took place the night before.

"I am not using any protection," Hsiao proudly, and enigmatically, proclaimed. Neither the revealing gowns nor her breasts won her an award at the events. However, the local media did spot a dot under Hsiao's arm and speculated that this was a sign she had breast enlargement surgery.

Golden Horse host Hu Gua's (胡瓜) self-referential jokes wore thin as the audience tired of his jibes about revalations he had cheated at an illegal gambling venue. High-society dame Chen Jing-jing (陳菁菁) and her mother filed a lawsuit against Hu last week, accusing him of swindling NT$10 million out of them in 2003. Local paparazzi also dug up witnesses who claimed Hu used a luxury flat on Dunhua South Road (敦化南路) as his private casino.

The Golden Bell Awards host Zhang Fei (張菲) got all misty eyed when he was informed that he had lost out on the Best Entertainment Show Host award to Tsai Kang-yong (蔡康永) and Little S (小S) for their show Here Comes Kang and X (康熙來了). Filled with jealousy and rage, Zhang said Tsai was in no way a better host than he was and then commented acidly on Tsai's absence from the awards ceremony.

"If the nominee has no legitimate reason not to attend the ceremony, it means he has no respect for the event and thus shouldn't receive the award," Zhang was quoted as saying in a Chinese-language daily.

Tsai replied, "Is it really such a big blow not to win the award?" After word got out about Faye Wang's (王菲) and TV hostess Momoko Tao's (陶子) pregnancies, Hong Kong actress Sandra Ng (吳君如) looks as though she will be delivering soon too.

Ng showed up at an award ceremony in Hong Kong with a visibly bulging belly and tried to avoid questions from the media by insisting that "you guys will know the answer soon."

On the other side of town, Ng's director boyfriend Peter Chan (陳可辛) made a poor attempt at covering up the news when he was congratulated by gossip savvy reporters and said, "What? I don't know anything about it. If she is really pregnant, I didn't necessarily have anything to do with it," the Liberty Times (自由時報) reported. His beaming smile may have given the game away, however.

Respondents to an online poll voted Taiwan teen idol He Jun-xiang (賀軍翔) the person they would most like to have a one-night-stand with and the preferred object of their sexual fantasies. The usual winners, Hong Kong star Daniel Wu (吳祖) and Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武), lost out in the sex object stakes to He. With his trademark sunshine smiles and bad-boy looks he has won a lot of votes from the gay community, who adore him as the ideal lover.