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Anorak News | A Little Phuong

A Little Phuong

by | 6th, October 2004

‘HAVING ticked the celebrity boxes marked “blonde”, “tanned” and “white of tooth”, EastEnders’ Kim Medcalf looked for her next move.

‘And no stretch marks, neither’

With a celebrity column in Hello! a way off, Kim opted instead for that other mainstay of the showbiz set: cuddling up to a photogenic, deprived, foreign child.

So she went to Vietnam and met with her sponsor accessory, Phuong.

Kim really loves Phuong but she’d never seen her before. So she was seized with fear when she walked up “a tiny path to Phuong’s modest house”.

Kim looked at her hands, tuning over the lollies and pencil case she bought with her as gift, unsure of what reception she’d get from the girl she “adopted”.

“I can’t count the number of times I’d taken out the photo of that pretty little girl and looked at it with a mixture of excitement about what our first meeting would be like,” sighed Kim.

She was also worried that she might feel upset about Phuong’s living conditions.

With her mind swimming with what could go wrong, Kim rapped on the door of the home Phuong shares with her 12-year-old sister, her other mum and her dad.

Here was the opportunity of meeting Phuong – the child Kim refers to as “my child” – face to face.

And on cue the pair beamed. Kim need not have worried because “I turned the corner and there was this tiny, beautiful child, dressed in her Sunday best, standing by the steps and holding a bouquet of lowers”.

”I’m, sure we felt as shy as each other,” says Kim, as the cameras clicked, the flesh bulbs popped and the ice melted away…’



Posted: 6th, October 2004 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink