Gung Haggis Fat Choy will soon become a tv special for CBC regional tv. It will air somewhere between January 21st and 25th. The featured musical guests will be: The Paper Boys (augmented with bagpiper and Chinese flute) filmed at Vancouver's beautiful Dr. Sun Yat Sun Classical Chinese Gardens; Qiu Xia He's Silk Road Music filmed on Keefer St. in Vancouver's Chinatown; Brave Waves (featuring Joe McDonald on bagpipes, and Andrew Kim on sitar + tabla drums) filmed in studio; George Sampson… (a Greek Canadian who sings in Mandarin and is now a part-time pop star in China – go figure) in studeio.
I will actually appear in about 3 different segments… Mostly in some of the back ground shots… We shot a Chinese New Year dinner segments with my parents, grandmother, girlfriend and friends. It was great fun – just what a good Chinese New Year Dinner should be. Dad even passed out li-see (lucky money). We chased away the ghosts, paid off debts and cleared the feng shui for prosperity to come our way. Joe McDonald my favorite and faithful bagpiper also joined us… If you watch closely there's a scene where I tricked Joe into the time honoured tradition of eating fish eyeballs… of course I ate the cheeks.
So now, Joe has followed me onto CBC Radio's “Richardson's Roundup” and Shelagh Roger's “Sounds Like Canada” and now a CBC television special! Who would have thunk it! It was back in August that CBC regional director Rae Hull invited me to a meeting to discuss pushing Gung Haggis Fat Choy (the dinner) up to another level. Producer Moyra Rodger of Out to See Productions was given the helm. She is an amazing woman that was able to capture the essence of Gung Haggis Fat Choy and transfer it to a television performance special. Each element of the show will include something Scottish and something Chinese – and of course it all comes out very Canadian. More details to follow.