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| star power: Shilpa Shetty with Keith Bradshaw |
Lords aleaping on hallowed turf
The distinguished cricket analyst Shilpa Shetty made so bold as to address a news conference in London last week to promote a Twenty20 match between the Rajasthan Royals, of which she and her boyfriend, Raj Kundra, are part owners, and the Middlesex Panthers. The latter took the English Twenty20 cup while the former won the IPL last year.
The match will take place at Lord’s on July 6 with some of the £10-20 ticket money going to the British Asian Trust, one of Prince Charles’s charities.
Also at the press conference were Lalit Modi, the IPL chairman (who told me that IPL 3 will “definitely, without doubt” return to India next year); Manoj Badale, co-owner of the Rajasthan Royals; Vinny Codrington, chief executive of Middlesex; and Keith Bradshaw, the MCC’s Australia-born chief executive.
Bradshaw, who generously introduced Shilpa as “the Bollywood superstar”, said she would somehow figure in the “Bollywood extravaganza” between innings.
Bollywood on hallowed Lord’s turf?
“Are Indians taking over?” I asked Bradshaw and Codrington.
On the way to the press conference at a hotel adjacent to Lord’s, I had noticed fellow Indians pouring out of St John’s Wood underground station and into the ground for the India-New Zealand warm up match. A couple of days later, it was the turn of the Oval to be bursting for the India-Pakistan clash (compared with a part vacant Lord’s for the England-West Indies game).
Bradshaw said that although Test cricket would remain the game’s pinnacle, “the (ultra-Conservative) membership (at Lord’s) are embracing Twenty20”.
Codrington added that Twenty20 presented a “great opportunity” to attract a new audience to Lord’s.
That, I am sorry to have to say, may not prove an unmixed blessing. I bow to no one in my admiration for Shilpa’s dancing but Bollywood at Lord’s is probably an acquired taste.
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| Ubiquitous: A poster of Slumdog Millionaire near Lord’s |
Slumdog mania
Walking past Lord’s, I noticed a poster by a bus stop for the DVD of Slumdog Millionaire. When I got to London Bridge railway station, a live advertising screen was promoting the DVD with the clip repeatedly showing Freida Pinto and Dev Patel dancing to the end credits. Settling back in my seat, I picked up a free copy of the London paper to find the whole back page had been taken up with an ad for the DVD.
It seems you cannot move in London for Slumdog ads.
I cannot quite work out who is going to make money on the DVDs except Warner Bros, which probably has a finger in the pie. In the early days it had shut down Warner Independent Pictures, which had taken a stake in the movie, and then pronounced that Slumdog Millionaire was commercially so unviable that the film ought to go straight to DVD.
The film has grossed more than $350m, which is not bad return on a budget of £15m. What this proves, if anything, is that the movie moguls of Hollywood know as little about what will make a hit as the rest of us.
In America, the DVD was released on March 31 and in Britain on June 1 (to rave reviews from critics who monitor DVD releases).
In keeping with tradition, the DVD first came out in India. The quality wasn’t good but then it seldom is on pirated versions.
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Summer fare
This year beautiful is in and ugly is out at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, where out of 10,000 submissions by British artists, famous and amateur, only 1,266 have been selected for display. Deciding on how I should view them, I did a quick tour of the rooms before picking on the ones that caught the eye.
After the flood of Indian abstracts of variable quality hitting the London auction rooms and galleries, I found it wonderfully soothing to lose myself among the English watercolours of which I confess I am inordinately fond of.
As for nudes, they are the artist’s stock in trade but Nadia, an oil by Ishbel Myerscough, was picked probably because of the artist’s attention to detail, such as the woodgrain on the floor, the fraying fabric on the sofa and even the pigments on the subject’s skin.
Looking at the sea of faces of people making V-signs in Dick Jewell’s ink jet print, War and Peace, Manmohan Singh’s will surely bring a smile to Indian visitors of whom I hope there will be many before the exhibition closes on August 16 (tickets are £7 for adults).
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Creative accounting
Dr Shahabuddin Yaqoob Quraishi, the Election Commissioner who has been on a tour of Britain, was good natured enough to pose for a photograph under the shadow of Big Ben. The poor man does deserve an all expenses paid break in London after helping so brilliantly to mastermind the logistical nightmare of an Indian general election.
He enjoyed a brief tour of the “Mother of Parliaments” but as someone hailing from the world’s largest democracy, he would have noted with concern that all is not well with the world’s oldest democracy.
Every day for about a month, The Daily Telegraph newspaper has been publishing details of MPs’ expenses funded by the taxpayer. MP after MP has been squirming with embarrassment as the paper has revealed how politicians have bent the rule to make thousands of pounds. One MP even put his £5 charitable donation on expenses. The public reaction has been one of utter disgust — which is curious because the same public has appeared less exercised about the billions of pounds wasted on what most now consider an “illegal war” in Iraq.
The list of MPs, Labour as well as Tory, who have had to declare they will not seek re-election is growing by the day. Cabinet ministers who are being forced to resign include the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, whose expenses included £10 for two “adult movies” watched by her husband.
Staggered at the widespread dishonesty that has been uncovered, Indians, giddy with self-righteousness, have been asking one another: “Did they learn corruption from us or did we learn it from them?”
Poet’s corner
In a car race, if the winner is disqualified, the next in line gets the prize. Although Oxford is under pressure from supporters of Arvind Krishna Mehrotra to offer him the post of Professor of Poetry, the university last week issued a new statement urging “a period of reflection prior to the initiation of proceedings to refilling the post, and it is unlikely therefore that proceedings will be started before next term at the earliest”.
Tittle tattle
As anticipated by the Brits some weeks ago, Manmohan Singh is back. Business confidence is back, too, with both Ficci and the CII about to send high-powered delegations to London. On such occasions, it has been customary for either the British Prime Minister or the Chancellor of the Exchequer to offer a pep talk. However, it is not certain how much longer Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling will keep their jobs.
Before long, Manmohan Singh, affectionately considered “a very old friend” by Brown, may have to contemplate striking some new alliances — for example, with “new best friend” David Cameron.
