Deepika Padukone and Shah Rukh Khan in Om Shanti Om

Give me a ‘B’! Give me an ’ollywood! The Indian film industry received another round of cheerleading praise, Westside, this week. The catalyst: new figures show that Hindi language films have brought booming box-office returns in both North America and Britain.

Om Shanti Om, Namastey London and Partner together racketed up more than £3 million in the UK last year, it emerged. The Film Distributors Association data also shows that films from India were among 525 released from at least 49 countries in 2007 in Britain. Despite that competition, the UK is lapping up Bollywood: it remains the world’s number one market for Bollywood productions outside of India. Overall Brits’ increasing enthusiasm for foreign films reflects an “ongoing process of sophistication”, the Association boasted — as well as helping to enhance already rising UK film cinema revenues.

Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, Forbes Magazine used Paris Hilton’s favourite word to describe Bollywood, calling it “hot”. The entrepreneurs’ glossy dished out the praise after it emerged that Hindi movies outperformed foreign language films from all other countries last year.

Back in the UK, Asian films didn’t quite make it to the British top 10 this week. Instead the chart was dominated by none other than a woolly mammoth: 10,000 BC, about a Neanderthal man who hunts the now extinct mammal as part of an epic struggle, took the top spot.

Meanwhile in London, The Tongues on Fire Film Festival, which has for the last three weeks been celebrating Asian women’s achievement in film, screened a number of more cerebral offerings. These included Dharm, about a pious Hindu priest, ‘I’ for India, following Indian emigrants to Britain in the 1960s, and a series of films on AIDS in India — including Mira Nair’s Migration and Santosh Sivan’s Prarambha, which stars southern superstar Prabhudeva.

Also this week: The name may still be Bond, James Bond. But when it comes to the Bond girl, in the upcoming Bond instalment Quantum of Solace, 007 history could be about to be made. That’s because for the first time a Muslim — model Zara Adams — looks poised to take the part.

Zara expressed her excitement about the possibility to The Sun newspaper in London. “Working with names like Marc Foster and Daniel Craig, among others, will be an amazing experience,” she said. “And to be on a James Bond film as a Muslim Asian woman, would not just open up doors for me but break down barriers for other people as well. That would be the biggest thing I could achieve.”

Zara, who was educated at Edinburgh University, also admitted that she was concerned that her parents may not be entirely happy with her taking the role — referring to her strict upbringing. Perhaps Bond himself can turn up at Zara’s family home for coffee — and a deft parental chat?

Jack Lamport

(A writer and part-time actor based in London)