SOME female celebrities who appeared in the sex photos have been officially named.

Edison Chen yesterday confirmed that Cecelia Cheung, Gillian Chung, Bobo Chan, and Rachel Ngan were some of the women in the photos, reported AP.

The court heard one photo file on Edison's computer was named 'Gill,' an apparent reference to Gillian.

Edison said he never told anyone about the photos and denied suggestions from defence lawyer Kelvin Lai that he transferred some of the images on a hand-held device, reported South China Morning Post.

'There's no way, there's no way, there's no way... There's no way I would do such a thing,' Edison said on the witness stand.

Edison said that if others had known about the photos they would have become public knowledge sooner.

'In a small city like Hong Kong, where a whisper gathers a huge force of momentum, these photographs would have surfaced earlier if I had told anyone about them,' he said.

'If I had boasted or bragged about these photographs, I'm sure the Hong Kong press would have gotten hold of this story a long time ago.'

Under cross examination, Edison admitted he had lost a laptop with hundreds of sexually-explicit images in 2004. But he said it contained only about one-third of the photos that were made public last year.

Meanwhile some of the female celebrities in the photographs could be called by the defence to give evidence in the trial of the computer technician charged with circulating the images. He has denied the charges.

Mr Lai confirmed that an application had been made to call four female witnesses in defence of Sze Ho Chun.

Mr Lai declined to reveal the identities of the witnesses but said the four would be capable of providing 'relevant and material evidence'.

He said he will submit his reasons for calling the women before Chief Magistrate Tong Man in March.

He said the magistrate would make a decision after hearing submissions from both parties, including prosecutor Hayson Tse.

Sze's trial is set for 10 days from 6 Apr at Kowloon City Court.

This article was first published in The New Paper.