Hrithik and Kareena in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham

English idylls have become ever more popular for Bollywood shoots in recent years. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom are just a few biggies to have been filmed here. Now it seems that those looking to enact their Bollywood fantasies are heading for the Jolly Old. Take Alamin, of Chime. Come Monday, he is due to take off for the skies from Cambridge airport, before tying the knot.

The pop sensation is looking to “relive” a scene from Love Story — as well as his marriage ceremony to Mun Mun Begum. A nuptial renewal ceremony will take place between the couple on board a vintage Douglas Dakota DC3. In Love Story, the plane was used for a scene in which a couple get married on board a private jet.

The plane will reportedly be escorted into the blue yonder by two Second World War Russian fighter planes. And once seven miles high, guests will be served food from Bengal Paradise Restaurant of Hatfield. “I am thoroughly looking forward to the wedding and am really very grateful that they (Bengal Paradise) have agreed to provide our very special in-flight menu,” Alamin was quoted by ThisisHertfordshire as saying. Ensuring that there will be no restraint when it comes to food consumption, the event has been timed to coincide with Id.

It has been a rocky summer for that timeless pillar of UK media, the BBC. A series of scandals have emerged in which viewers have been manipulated or misled; and one declaration of editorial wrong-doing just seems to lead to another. First there was the ill-edited footage of the Queen in which her Majesty was made to suffer the indignity of watching herself “storm out” of a photoshoot (something that never actually happened) — in a monumental cock-up now referred to in broadcasting circles as Queengate. Viewers of other programmes such as Blue Peter, a staple of British kids TV for decades, and the charity show Children in Need, were also found to have been cheated. Now the BBC has admitted to misrepresenting not only her Maj, but its Bollywood-loving audience too. The beeb’s desi radio station, the Asian Network, owned up to misleading its audience over a phone-in vote. The editor of the show Film Cafe apparently overruled an audience phone-in for two categories in its Bollywood awards. The act of Bolly folly has helped lead to the resignation of top BBC bigwigs this week.

And so it may be left to Britain’s all-time favourite poet-playwright, William Shakespeare himself, to redeem the reputation of British-handled Bollywood. The Bard’s tragic-comedy, The Merchant of Venice, is currently being staged in Chicago with a Bollywood theme. The Silk Road Theatre Project’s production, written by Bombay-born Shishir Kurup and directed by Stuart Carden, re-imagines Christians and Jews in 16th century Venice as 21st century immigrant Hindus and Muslims in modern-day Venice, California. As well as getting their tongues round some Shakespearean English, the actors are, according to reviews, lip-syncing to Indian pop tunes. Maybe Alamin should redirect his private jet to The Windy City to give the troupe a helping hand.