The Dish on Jan Wong (Page 3)

Potential interviewees, however, can take comfort that Wong does edit some details. Take dandruff. She didn't mention author Pierre Berton's flakes. "That would have been really cruel," she says.

"I draw the line at involuntary problems like dandruff, or spinach in the teeth, which is really not fair."

Conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste How does the conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra get his kids to practise piano? ... Does Saraste, 40, sit there nodding benign approval at his sons, Severi, 9, and Frans, 7, nurturing their fragile egos, reinforcing self-esteem? No, he does not. He makes them cry. "I think you have to show passion when you deal with kids. Sometimes I'm really aggressive with them."

Not me. I tell Wong she has a chunk of spinach wedged in a bottom tooth. She visibly cringes as she fishes out the culprit with a fingernail. She frowns when I ask if I've embarrassed her. "A little bit, yeah."

Laughing off my cheap shot, Wong quickly recovers to explain the fun she brings to "Lunch With" isn't haphazard. She spends an average of three days preparing each piece: one day researching a subject and two days writing about them. "That's really spoiled, most reporters don't have that luxury," she admits, adding "Lunch With" interviews can be exhausting. "I just want to lie down for a nap afterwards."

One indulgence Wong won't allow -- for her column's sake -- is palling around with other big-name journalists.

WWF Star Sable The mammary glands of Rena Mero, the wrestler formerly known as Sable, cantilever over the table at lunch, restrained only by a black Mossimo tank top -- and no bra -- they look like two balloons, defying gravity and nature.... Her husband approved the final product [breast implants] in the operating room. "I was very supportive," agrees Marc, 39, who looks like a cartoon villain with his biceps, moustache and curly brown hair cascading down his thick neck.

"I don't want to be friends with anybody I might need to write about," she stresses. Wong would rather hang out with old friends. "Jan's not corrupted by success," says Jay Bryan. "She still keeps in touch with people she's known since high school." "She's the best friend a person could have," adds Saunders. "She is not a prima donna."

Just an ordinary mother, who's concerned her kids are enrolled in too many activities: cub scouts, karate, piano and Mandarin lessons. Both boys have begun to complain. "Poor kids," she muses. "Do you think it's too much?"

Knowing Wong is fluent in Mandarin after reading her best-sellers Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now (Doubleday, 1996) and Jan Wong's China: Reports From a Not-So-Foreign Correspondent (Doubleday, 1999), I question why she hasn't passed the language to her progeny herself. She replies her teachings haven't stuck, though classes are apparently not much better. But Wong keeps them enrolled, she says, "because of the other mothers pressuring me."

	Maclean's Columnist Alan Fotheringham "...he sometimes doesn't let work interfere with his parties. Maclean's sent him to London to cover Princess Diana's funeral. To the annoyance of his editors, he flew back early -- the morning of the funeral -- to attend his sixty-fifth birthday party..."

Wong doesn't mind talking about her family and she's written about her clan in at least two columns. That's why her children are suspicious whenever she asks too many questions. "They ask, 'Why do you want to know? Are you quoting us?'" she says. "My whole family is really wary of me now. The tragedy of being related to a writer is that they're gonna write about you."

Good thing for her kin that Wong excels at finding other story sources, a point she proves by conversing with our waitress. Within two minutes, the woman reveals how she speaks five languages and nearly died immigrating to Canada in a frightening ship journey from her native Vietnam.

Canadian Alliance Leader Stockwell Day "Marijuana on and off, depending where the party was, for a couple of years," says Day when asked what drugs he took. "I never got into needles, cocaine, heroin, the hard stuff. I don't have flashbacks." Excerpted from Lunch With Jan Wong, Doubleday Canada, 2000

The example leads Wong to confess she prefers interviewing ordinary people to celebrities. "I don't like celebrities that much," she says. "They're boring and I have to really struggle to make them interesting." That's not to say Wong is bored with "Lunch." She still has a subject wish-list that includes Quebec Premier Bernard Landry and Governor General Adrienne Clarkson. But she admits the fun will eventually stop.

In the meantime, don't bet on celebrities tiring of her. "I thought I'd have a massive shut-down long ago, that nobody would have lunch with me," she says. "But it seems we're never going to run out of people."

Sylvain-Jacques Desjardins is a communications officer at McGill's University Relations Office.