Next Magazine, the gossip rag that celebrities love to hate for airing their dirty laundry in public, inaugurated its Entertainment Awards (娛樂大賞頒獎典禮) a few months back and then invited the winners, a veritable who’s who of stars who have graced its cover over the past few years, to its first annual awards ceremony, held last week. Astoundingly, many showed up.
The awards’ main category, “top popular stars,” spread the praise among 10 of the entertainment industry’s most recognizable faces.
Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) was first up, and told the assembled glitterati that she had worked hard to earn her award because Next was making a killing off her. Asked what her most memorable cover story was, Tsai pondered: “The one about my skin allergy.”
Predictably, media outlets pulled the image out of their archives.
Pop heartthrob Jerry Yan (言承旭), also honored as a “popular star,” thanked Next for publishing unflattering photos of him so that people would think he is more handsome in person.
Singer Rainie Yang (楊丞琳), meanwhile, showed off a little skin to prove she’s a bigger boob than had been reported. “Everyone thinks I’m a 32A. The fact is I’m 32B!” she said.
Some might think that these celebrities were nuts to attend such an awards ceremony. But as Oscar Wilde once wrote, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
Speaking of being talked about, gossip rags have been spilling considerable ink over the past few weeks about the breakup of model Kelly Lin (林熙蕾) and former F4 boyband singer and actor Ken Chu (朱孝天).
The Apple Daily, which can always be relied on to put gossip in an historical context, published a timeline of the couple’s “relationship,” which it claimed began in 2005 when the duo were shooting the movie The Tokyo Trial. The daily confirmed that the rumors were true in 2007, when it published pictures showing the pair cavorting in matching outfits. But the real clincher came last year, when Chu allegedly referred to Lin as his fiancee at a bash in Japan.
Things took a turn for the worst, however, when Lin made public her displeasure at Chu’s behavior, which includes showing up to work visibly hungover and throwing hissy fits on set. He didn’t endear himself to Taiwan’s netizens when he referred to China as his motherland.
At a press conference over the weekend, reporters badgered Chu with questions about his “wife.”
“Who is Kelly Lin?” he responded. But the assembled media stuck to their guns and Chu, visibly annoyed, tried to put an end to the inquisition: “You are rumormongering ... this line of questioning makes me uncomfortable.”
In other celebrity romance news, Andy Hui’s (�?w) love life continues to unravel, as reported by the Apple, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) and pretty much every other media outlet in Asia. So it must be true.
Last month the Canto-pop star split with girlfriend Michelle Yu (余德琳) amid rumors that he ditched her to get back with his Bible-thumping ex-flame Sammi Cheung (鄭秀文).
And there’s more. Last week, Pan Heng Zhang (潘恒章), Hui’s assistant from 1993 to 2008, came to his defense. Well, kind of.
Thinking that she could dispel rumors that Hui is nothing but a low-life lothario, Pan revealed that they had a secret two-year romance. “He’s a wonderful man,” she said.
Needless to say, the ploy backfired. The media, quick to put two and two together, noted that Hui dumped Pan at the same time that he hooked up with Yu, further revealing that he fired her in the process.
Hui, in his own defense, sent a handwritten letter to the press on Monday admitting, somewhat obliquely, to the affair with Pan and saying he was sorry, “for not being a good enough person.”
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