One person’s Champagne Supernova.

It seems like years since I have been to the Champagne Bar at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, and maybe it has even though I have actually not been there for a few months. I should because they have one of the best bona fide Jazz singer I have heard performing in Hong Kong. The real deal, so to speak. But, as always, it’s people who make a city and everything else…

The Champagne Bar was our favourite meeting place for so many reasons.

There was the convenience of the venue which was just a short waIk downstairs after the usual very long buffet lunch at the Tiffin Lounge.

The hotel and its venues were the unofficial offices for us executives when at Universal Music, and then, after a couple of us moved to EMI, the Grand Hyatt became more important than our official offices in Tsimshatsui, which were more to keep up pretences and for very upmarket nocturnal entertainment than anything else.

Our Personal Assistants were miracle workers and Fagin like big sisters to us errant Oliver Twisted children with very great expectations.

For myself, always memorable about those days was persuading Norah Jones to give an unannounced unplugged performance in the music room adjacent to JJ’s for a few of my closest friends. Over 300 people showed up and we had to start selling tickets.

Norah was in a good mood that night and it was a terrific show and post show party at One Harbour Road with her telling me how to be a better father as we polished off a few bottles of Red though the colours could have been those of the rainbow.

There was then the time when someone who I’ll call Smarmy from Universal Music came to meet me at the Tiffin Lounge with a new contract in hand thinking that he was doing me a favour. I told him to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine because I was moving elsewhere.

My longtime friend Norman Cheng and myself had created quite a scheme to sidestep any Non Disclosure and Non Compete Agreements to enable us to move to EMI with a home run in our hip pockets that would take the struggling music company with a meagre four percent market share in the region to a 24 percent market share in less than six months. And we did.

The Champagne Bar was always where we did our celebrations before and after closing deals. These took place from around 6pm to 11pm before going down to JJ’s and having the venue’s manager “Uncle” Danny get us the best table in the house with a couple of bottles of Dom Perignom ready to pop.

Living next door at the Convention Plaza service apartments and in the infamously famous suite in the shape of the all white suited 1616, there was always a different type of popping to look forward to. I was recently divorced and it was how we rolled.

As for the Champagne Bar, it was a far more upmarket version of Cheers, where everyone knew everyone’s names and we knew theirs- the always well-clued in General Manager Gordon Fuller who probably knew what was going on before we did, the staff behind the bar who were our friends, the regulars, the irregulars who dropped in and whose businesses we knew about, and they knew that we knew and how it was okay with there always being a choice of what to take that was available.

With the resident singer Pam making sweet music in the background, us customers grabbed a ride on a fascinating and always entertaining merry go round of life.

Joining us were various businessmen from different industries, rather exclusive ladies from Eastern Europe looking for short time company and longtime relationships that would help them stay in Hong Kong, and the usual grifters of bloated blancmange who offered entertainment value.

Nothing about any of this was tacky. It was just how different venues in Hong Kong at the time were divided and classified and categorised, and what made the city one of the most intoxicating mixes in the world.

We didn’t need updates on the “surge” of tourists visiting Asia’s world city. They just showed up because it was the place they wanted to be- Actors, politicians and presidents and many from different parts of the entertainment world.

One thing I believe very few were privy to was how much POWER floated through the Champagne Bar.

When comfortable and feeling safe, people let their guard down and talk. This wasn’t drunk talk which, of course, happened. No, these were intellectuals and academics and some in extremely high places from overseas sharing stories with you about the world of politics that would have the ears of journalist, editor, author and name behind the Tatler, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and the Daily Beast-Tina Brown-not just burning, but burnt to a crisp.

What was going on was something long removed from meeting Keanu Reeves at the bar and talking about his band Dog Star. This was about people who really knew mentioning the stories behind the names that meant nothing to the world back then, but are very much part of mainstream news stories today.

This is what made the Champagne Bar far more than the sum of its parts, and why I should have gone ahead with the idea of producing “The Champagne Bar: The Movie”.

Today is what it is, and for those of us who knew what Hong Kong was, well, it’s either saying, Thanks for the memories and leaving for the next port of call or adjusting to change.

To do this would mean reworking mindsets to accept those with no idea of what they’re doing nor any idea of the storytellers we met along the way, others who put the flim into flam and those who were real influencers with no need to shadowbox with insecurities and ergo egos.

#hongkong #GrandHyattHongKong #champagne #champagnebar #norahjones