IN THE midst of a storm brewing over Fann Wong's troubled media relations, her record producer has stepped forward to clear the air.

Mr Ken Lim, director of Hype Records, told Life! yesterday that the bad press had been blown out of proportion.

"The information written up in the press is not a true reflection of what she is all about," said the man whose company produced all four of Fann's pop albums and the movie soundtrack of The Truth About Jane And Sam.

Mr Lim, 35, who has worked with the TCS actress for over five years, gave a blow-by-blow rebuttal of the complaints aired by Chinese newspaper reporters and published in yesterday's Life!.

Of the claim that she does not return reporters' pages, he explained: "She doesn't have the time!" Fann, he said, wakes up every day to a schedule. "On days when she has to record for an album, she sleeps in the studio from 4 to 8 am, wakes up, washes her face, carries on recording, goes to the film set to shoot her serials, goes home in the evening to shower, and comes back to the studio to continue recording," he recounted.

On her recent three-week promotion tour in Taiwan for her latest album Missing You, she had to shoot five music videos in between all the events.

While shooting the video for the single Private Number with British boy band 911, she went through three nights without sleep, he noted.

"She has no life, let alone have time to return all the calls she gets every day," he said. And there are quite a number.

He said on a slow day, she gets at least three pages from journalists who would go on to ask questions like what her favourite eye-shadow colour is or why she frequents Passion hair salon.

There are also fans, posing as magazine journalists, who want to arrange interviews just to meet her.

"So she has to be very careful about returning these calls. The best and proper way for journalists to get in touch with her is to go through the company. But they don't doing that."

On the charge by Chinese newspaper reporters that Fann reveals more to foreign journalists than she does to the ones here, he said this was not true.

"We vet all the overseas interviews before she flies off, and have cancelled a lot of shows and interviews because the topics were not on the album, but on her private life," he said.

On another claim that she declines to tell a reporter her wardrobe and promotions budget while launching her Shopping album, but details of which came out in the Taiwanese press days later, Mr Lim explained: "It's because she herself didn't know!"

"The Taiwanese press found out because they called us for the figures," he added.

Fann, he stressed, is a very private person. "She guards it because it gives her the sanity that she needs."

He conceded that she may not be skilful in defending her privacy. She expects journalists to respect it, but unfortunately, they do not, he observed. "At the end of the day, she is still a person like you and me. And I think readers should not be misled by what they read only," he said.

No good quotes but I don't hate her

IT IS not a good time to be Fann Wong.

Singapore's homegrown mega-star is suddenly the most hated person on this island.

Chinese newspaper reporters, who have long griped in private about her reticence, her evasiveness, her never-call-back unreliability, have declared their disapproval of he in print for all Singaporeans to see.

A poll conducted by Friday Weekly last year - a little blob in her otherwise gleaming public-opinion record - was dredged up by one reporter to announce to those who didn't already know that readers had pronounced her the most hated Singapore star in 1998.

And in a sternly-worded statement sent to Life! on Tuesday where Raintree Pictures confirmed her recalcitrant reputation, it seems that even her movie bosses have turned their back on her.

One can only imagine what Fann is feeling right now.

Burying her head in her pillows and giving the headboard a few good thumps? Or going shopping, her favourite pastime, like a dogged trouper?

If it is of any consolation at all - and it probably isn't, but I'll give my two cents' worth anyway - I don't hate her.

Okay, interviewing Fann isn't exactly a dream. On the four occasions that I met her for face-to-face interviews, she always had on her favourite expression - that of impossible frothiness. So blithe, so unreal.

And it is impossible to get a good quote out of her. Toss her a prickly question and it slides off her like oil on Teflon.

The Television Corporation of Singapore actress is a queen of long, rambly sentences that throw you off your original question. And she does it with her million-dollar smile still surgically attached.

She is probably a pleasant person to meet on a personal basis. Shorn of her superstar trappings, she is no doubt someone whom you can have a good, girlie giggle with.

But when it comes to journalism, where the order of the day has always been an exciting story angle and a few sparkling quotes thrown in, she is poor material.

Yet, on a different level, her guarded attitude towards the media is strangely endearing.

For all her refusal to tell me about her boyfriend (now supposedly ex-boyfriend), or whether he was the one who bought her the Mercedes SLK she zipped around in (word is she doesn't drive it anymore), I often think back to 12 years ago when she was just a 16-year-old girl who had won a Her World makeover competition which was to shoot her to model stardom, then showbiz.

Back when she was in her teens, she probably wouldn't have wanted to say anything about her boyfriend - and she obviously still doesn't.

The huge difference, of course, is that she is a megastar now. And Fann should realise - and probably does - that the life of a celebrity can never be fully private. This is the price of fame - that you can't go to the supermarket without first signing a stackful of your own photographs.

In the West, only artistes of solid, unshakeable substance can afford to still earn millions without mass publicity on their talents. Think Prince or Robert De Niro.

But Fann cannot really sing. And her acting - while good - is not topclass stuff. She needs to get into the media circus to get just that added push into the limelight.

And the fact that she refuses to sell herself for that makes her just a little bit more respectable.

But here is how she could learn a thing or two from her much-touted rival, Zoe Tay.

The queen of Caldecott Hill is not called so without a reason. She is a media darling who dishes out, obligingly, snippets about her beauty routine and holiday destinations.

Yet, she manages to do so without anyone really knowing anything about her real private life. Take details of her husband, for example.

Zoe is a class act. It is a delicate balance, an art that comes with experience. And this is probably what Fann has to learn, to ride out the ever tumultuous media game.