The Dish on Jan Wong (Page 2)

Writing precisely what she sees is part of the "Lunch With" cachet, says Bryan, who questions the harsh criticisms Wong receives for revealing the good, the bad and the ugly. "What I like about 'Lunch With' is if someone is vicious, then they come across as vicious," he says. "But if they're basically good, they come across as good. If you read her columns carefully, Jan gets people to portray themselves. It's quite rare that she uses critical adjectives."

True. But count on the columnist to find colourful descriptions. About Peter Nygard, for instance, she wrote: "A lifetime of tanning has left his skin like a baseball mitt."

Observing that Suzanne Somers had buttoned her blouse high at the neck, Wong remarked, "It only partially hides creeping crepe-neck syndrome." If the descriptions seem cutting, Wong counters that stars often market their looks for profit. Piercing their facades is part of her "Lunch With" mission, she says, "which is like a weekly consumer report on celebrity."

"Celebrity is a multibillion-dollar business," she continues, noting most interviewees have products to push. Somers was plugging a cookbook and $199 U.S. Facemaster, a contraption that allegedly smoothes skin. Hence the crepe-neck comment. "These machines must not work," Wong deduces. "Otherwise, she would use it on her neck."

Famous people are also interesting specimens to examine. "Like a slide in biology," she explains, adding there's no emotion in the process. "I don't give celebrities special treatment."

Margaret Trudeau cursed Wong's zero-filter approach, after confessing to the columnist that she wished the late Pierre Trudeau had fathered her only daughter, Alicia. Ms Trudeau, who was remarried at the time, was dismayed when the comment was printed. "I wish I'd never met you," she later hissed to Wong.

No reaction to "Lunch With" has persuaded its author to soften her style. Though Wong would like to dispel the myth that she skewers everyone she meets. "I skewer one out of five," she chuckles. "People have to self-destruct in front of me for me to skewer them."

Still, John Saunders describes Wong as unflinchingly tough. "She's not a bitch or spiteful," he says. "But if a question needs to be asked, no matter how much a subject doesn't want it to be, she will ask it."

That's why Saunders feels Wong should quit her column. "It's a waste of her talent," he says, suggesting Wong is better suited for hard-hitting news. "She's the best reporter I've ever worked with."

Infamous Juror Gillian Guess Guess who's coming to dinner? Not just Gillian Guess, Canada's first babe-juror, but her daughter, too. As Guess slides into a booth ... you can't help noticing her tight black bell-bottoms and bubble-gum-pink lipstick. Her 15-year-old daughter, in contrast, is defiantly plain in a baggy navy sweatshirt. You'd dress like that, too, if your mom was accused of having sex with a defendant in a double-murder trial while serving on the jury.

Top brass at the National Post seem to agree, since they've repeatedly tried to woo her away. The Globe and Mail fought back by giving Wong a raise and a private office. "I must be the only reporter in Toronto with her own office," she marvels, adding newsrooms are open-air environments. "It's nice to feel wanted."

Too bad if colleagues or celebrities don't always like her. "If people say I'm jealous or I'm catty, I don't care," she says. When I mention she's uttered "I don't care" at least a dozen times, Wong laughs once more. "That's my line, my motto: I don't care."

She stops and turns serious. "The reason I say I don't care is that I care deeply about journalism," Wong stresses. "To me, that's what's important. Whether I'm actually serving the community by producing stories that will tell them something they should know, to help them make choices. Not whether people like me or don't."

Wong credits her years as a business reporter -- including stints at the Montreal Gazette, Boston Globe and Wall Street Journal -- for toughening her journalistic approach. Her time as The Globe and Mail's foreign correspondent in China, from 1988 to 1994, was another influence. She explains her chutzpah in the introduction to a book of her most memorable columns, Lunch with Jan Wong, published last year: "After witnessing the Tiananmen Square massacre, I'm only mildly unnerved by a celebrity hissy fit."