Son of ‘Uncle Calvin’ of the Happy Birthday kids show, Wong talks about his musical childhood, working at Metro Radio and doing crazy stuff
I WAS BORN IN 1963. When I was six years old, Dr Yip Wai-hong (the late composer and music educator) asked me to join the Hong Kong Children’s Choir. It was the first children’s choir in Hong Kong and at the beginning there were 20 kids. But they rehearsed on a Sunday, so I had to choose between going to choir rehearsal or joining my dad, Calvin Wong, when he did his television programme for kids on Rediffusion. (Wong opted to join his father.) It was called Happy Birthday and he was “Uncle Calvin”. A lot of poor kids would be invited. And whoever was having a birthday, the (Russian bakery) Cherikoff would sponsor a little cake or a little toy for those children. His co-host, Lai Yuen-ling, would arrive in her high heels just before the show went live. She was one of the “Three Blossoms of Rediffusion”. My dad would wear white trousers and very colourful shirts, very contrasting, you see, it was black and white TV. I would be in the “cave”, right in the middle of the set, and I’d watch my dad through a slit in the curtain as he entertained the children with puppets, and sometimes I would pass him things.
