Kai Tak Airport

Everyone's focused on that.

And if we could make that happen on a single day, I remember when Kai Tak moved to CLK in Hong Kong.

This is in Hong Kong.

That's right.

You know, it's outdated, but it is a good stadium.

They recently, they built a new one in Kai Tak, where the airport used to be, where they can close the roof and it's got air conditioning.

And that's a sensational place to watch football.

What's it called? Kai Tak.

kaitak stadium uh k-a-i space t-a-k yeah so i mean it's a long story but about 30 years ago they moved the airport from kaitak which is kind of not too far from hong kong but kind of quite in the city they moved it to the outskirts of hong kong and then on the old airport years later they built this new stadium where um it means hong kong can do a few more uh big names for concerts because there's all sorts of noise rules so like Coldplay came over and yeah some other people.

And then obviously Hong Kong is very big for the rugby sevens, which, you know, it's probably the big, the big social event of the year sports wise.

They did that in Kai Tak and then Hong Kong played a few games in Kai Tak.

We had the Asian cup qualifiers where ultimately we didn't qualify, but you know, that was getting 40,000 plus people for the three games and, And then recently we just had the ASEAN Cup, despite not being in ASEAN.

I had a- also the privilege of landing in Hong Kong twice as a co-pilot on-

Kai Tak?

... on Kai Tak.

Right.

That's a-

Yeah.

Heading into the old Kai Tak, but we flew into a typhoon.

Yeah.

Three-

So eventually I arrived.

There was still the old airport, Kai Tak Airport, where you were landing with a special license straight between the buildings.

I mean, it takes some skill to land your plane there.

And so that was quite interesting.

The People's Liberation Army went in and dealt with these student pro-democracy demonstrations, killing a lot of people.

We walked off the plane at the old airport in Hong Kong, Kai Tak Airport.

And the producer was there holding up a copy of the South China Morning Post saying, scores or maybe it was hundreds killed in Tiananmen Square I thought my god I thought I'd be going up there but you know the the grown-ups were already up there there's a guy called Brian Barron was there who I was a great admirer of John Simpson was there Kate Adie these were all the names to conjure with when I was 20 odd years older than me and and so Brian actually Brian Barron we spoke on the phone he said look Jeremy I know you want to come up here but frankly we'll monster you stay in hong kong for about a week you'll have your own story i was really disappointed but actually he was quite right because there were massive demonstrations in hong kong and then i went to shanghai and then i went to to beijing and it was and i was there for weeks and weeks i mean best part of a couple of months and that was on about two hours notice

did you have enough pants