This time last year former financial secretary John Tsang lost the election for Hong Kong’s chief executive to Carrie Lam.
Now, he’s finally landed a role as a chief… sort of.
The former senior civil servant will provide the voice of a Bronze-Age village chief in the Cantonese dub of a new stop-motion animated film by Aardman Animations, the studio that created Wallace and Gromit.
Early Man, which will be released in Hong Kong on April 5, centres around a caveman called Dug (voiced by Eddie Redmayne) whose tribe is under threat by Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston) and his Bronze Age city which wants to take over their land and transform it into a giant mine, prompting Dug to unite his clan to defeat Lord Nooth and save their home, by challenging them to a soccer match.
Pretty sure that’s historically accurate.
Latest feat of John Tsang… as Chief Bobnar in 'Early Man' pic.twitter.com/f0r5aXv8mG
— Kris Cheng (@krislc) March 26, 2018
In the Cantonese dub of the film, Tsang provides the voice of chief Bobnar, the head of Dug’s tribe. You can hear Tsang’s voice for a few seconds in the Cantonese dub of the trailer here:
It’s the latest item on a growing resume of work in the entertainment industry for Tsang.
Since he lost the election last year, he has gone on to host a TV show for local broadcaster and radio station RTHK called Hong Kong Stories, and had some gigs as a radio host for Commercial Radio.
Affectionately known as ‘Uncle Pringles’ because of his uncanny resemblance to a man on a certain brand of potato chips that come in the distinctive in tube, Tsang was a favorite among Hongkongers for the chief executive job.
According to HKFP, Tsang consistently surpassed Lam in opinion polls as the most popular candidate for the city’s leader, and — despite being in the pro-establishment camp — he was a favorite among the pro-democracy camp who saw Tsang as better at uniting Hongkongers than Lam, and also not as staunchly loyal to Beijing as Lam.
Tsang, however, won only 365 votes from the 1,194-member election committee, losing to Lam’s 777.
