From Gympie schoolboy to Asian pop star: Hong Kong celebrates Gregory Rivers with top award

Hong Kong pop star Gregory Rivers may have been famous in his adoptive country for more than two decades, but he is almost unknown in his hometown of Gympie, Queensland.

"I forget certain English words now," the fluent Cantonese speaker said when contacted by the ABC.

Rivers, 50, left Australia 28 years ago to follow a dream of being a pop star in Asia.

This week he capped off his career with a major award.

Rivers won best Hong Kong male singer at the TVMost 1st Guy Ten Big Ging Cook Gum Cook Awards Distribution, which celebrates the best performers on Hong Kong satirical show 100Most.

100Most is a weekly online program which features cantopop songs with sarcastic lyrics addressing problems and concerns in the country.

The awards night was watched by hundreds of thousands of locals.

"Not only did his dream finally come true, he is also a face of Hong Kong," wrote Vivienne Chow in the South China Morning Post.

Following a dream

Rivers studied medicine at the University of New South Wales in the 1980s, when he was introduced to Cantonese pop music by students from Hong Kong.

He fell in love with the style of music — a hybrid of Cantonese opera and Western pop — sold up everything, and moved to the island city.

A lucky meeting after two weeks led to his first big break.

"There was this superstar here named Alan Tam who did a concert in Sydney and I was his driver," Rivers said.

"His band recognised me and invited me to sing with him."

Rivers supported Tam for two stadium shows and a few months later auditioned for a Caucasian character in a local television soap opera.

"My acting was terrible, my Cantonese was terrible but I thought I should at least try," he said.

"The audition was really bad but they didn't have a second choice.

"I ended up being TVB's token Caucasian for 20 years straight."

Famous face in Hong Kong

Rivers has appeared in more than 200 different soap opera TV series and is among the best-known Western faces in Hong Kong for his acting, "as the stereotypes — the missionary, the supervisor or the police officer".

He said he had been surprised to win such a prestigious award in Hong Kong for the song Forever ATV, which lampooned the local broadcaster that was struggling to survive without a licence.

Rivers, who still visits his parents in Gympie every Christmas, said he may have reached the pinnacle of his career with the award,

"I'm not hoping for too much more, because I'm Caucasian, I'm not Chinese and they've given me this top award. It's pretty amazing," he said.