Shah Rukh Khan

Mumbai, Jan. 28: Shah Rukh Khan has accepted Anbumani Ramadoss’s appeal to quit smoking — but in real life. On screen, he is not prepared to make such promises.

“Ramadoss feels Mr (Amitabh) Bachchan and myself should not be smoking on screen, and I truly agree. More than that, I wish that Mr Ramadoss prays I stop smoking in real life (since) that’s worse. Movies, we just do it for make-believe… we shouldn’t have censorship on that,” the actor said last evening.

The rebuff came a day after the Union health minister urged the Bollywood Big Two not to smoke in movies, saying he had “statistics to show that 52 per cent children” had their first puff after watching screen idols.

The minister had cited Rajnikant as a role model to Bachchan and Shah Rukh, saying the Sivaji The Boss star did not smoke “on screen as a matter of principle”.

But the parallel did not go down well in Mumbai. “There was no need for him to cite Rajnikant’s example. There are scenes where Rajnikant is holding a cigarette, though he might not be smoking,” said Shah Rukh’s associate at Red Chillies, the actor’s production house.

It was, possibly, not a coincidence that the actor chose to stub out the appeal at a news conference after the French government conferred the “Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters” title on him for his contribution to cinema.