‘And they dubbed me’: Hong Kong photo artist Basil Pao on filming The Last Emperor, travelling with Monty Python’s Michael Palin, and a new retrospective of his career
- The hard-partying septuagenarian opens up on his long photo-art career that has seen him travel the world and rub shoulders with film and TV luminaries
The day before this interview, Basil Pao Ho-yun had made a night of it at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong.
As a result, when we meet at the crowded Cheung Chau ferry pier – the photographer instantly identifiable by his trademark panama hat, a signifier Michael Palin also found useful when they travelled the globe for his BBC television series – Pao is feeling, as he puts it, “delicate”.
He suggests a nearby outdoor restaurant, where he’s a regular, to see how things go.
Over four enjoyable hours, several glasses of white wine are consumed, although your correspondent sticks to tea. (“I know – incredible that somebody I’m with could not be a drinker,” he says to the waitress.)
Before the first sip, he remarks, “I turn into a beast when I have too much.” Had he been beastly the previous night? “Oh, very abusive, very nasty.”
Indelicate swear words certainly multiply as he perks up, but there are no signs of brutishness and when I ask around later, people make approving comments about his charm as well as his talent so, presumably, that’s one of his jokes.