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| MAN OF THE MOMENT: Anil Kapoor in 24 |
My Name is Anil Kapoor....and I’m not a flirt
Anil Kapoor was interviewed last week on BBC Radio 4’s daily arts and entertainment programme, Front Row, about his new role in the hugely popular American TV series, 24, in which he plays Omar Hassan, an Arab president visiting New York.
The presenter, Kirsty Lang, began by asking Anil about the Slumdog Millionaire effect: “To what extent has it changed your life and your career? You were already huge in Bollywood?”
Our Anil adopted a soft, seductive tone: “I am sitting in front of you — you wouldn’t have invited me to this building if I was just a Bollywood star. ‘Who is Anil Kapoor? Forget it.’ ”
Is it a coincidence that he had given an identical reply in New York to the women who had interviewed him on NBC’s Today show?
Initially taken on to do 10 episodes and act alongside Keifer Sutherland who plays agent Jack Bauer as America battles world terrorism, Anil’s contract has been extended to 16. Surely, he will get $250,000-500,000 for his efforts.
The current series, the eighth, has already started in America and launches in Britain today.
It begins with President Hassan, who has come to America to make peace and meet a woman president, facing an assassination threat.
Sadly for Shah Rukh Khan, it fails.
Shah Rukh made the bad mistake of turning down the role of devious quiz master Prem Kumar in Slumdog — he would probably have bagged an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Anil has also received excellent initial reviews from American critics after his debut in 24.
“I have done over 100 films and suddenly I feel like a newcomer,” Anil gushed.
Asked about the waves made by My Name is Khan, which is being distributed by Fox, Anil neatly turned the spotlight back on Slumdog: “Matter of fact Slumdog Millionaire has made all the difference...the film has done huge business and studios believe in numbers, they believe in money... ‘Come on, let’s have more films made in India, let’s do more scripts...’ There is a lot of money to be earned from India because there are more than 1.2 billion people. There are a lot of people who have never seen 24, they want to see it, they feel very patriotic, they feel very excited, they feel very proud. ‘We will see our Indian actor speaking English with American actors’, so they get very excited.”
Kirsty cut in: “So the makers of 24 will be able to tap into a huge market?”
Anil revealed how the director of Slumdog had reacted: “That’s what Danny (Boyle) said, ‘Very smart of them to cast you in 24.’ I said, ‘Is it very smart of them or is it very smart of me to be in it?’ ”
Dinner date
Reporters are supposed to write the news, not make it, but we can make an exception for “ravishing” Inderdeep Bains, who offered a St Valentine’s Day date with herself as a clever way of raising money for the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Haiti Earthquake Appeal.
The 26-year-old chief reporter on the Royal Borough Observer, a weekly newspaper in Berkshire, had hoped to raise £250 — and ended up doubling the figure.
The lucky man to win a date with her after his name was drawn at random was a local hotel manager Kaviraj Johal, also 26 and 6ft tall.
It was “a date to remember”, Inderdeep’s paper reported after the couple enjoyed a delicious candle-lit dinner at the Macdonald Berystede Hotel and Spa in nearby Sunninghill.
“I had the seabass and he had chicken!” says Inderdeep.
“It was a very nice evening and Kaviraj was a real gentleman,” she adds.
Kaviraj returns the compliment: “Inderdeep looked stunning and it was a pleasure to have dinner with her. It was a very enjoyable evening and I’m hoping we’ll be keeping in touch.”
Indian men, being Indian men, flooded Inderdeep from all parts of India with offers of “friendship” but perhaps they should have made a contribution to her charity as well.
Designer cousins
Since a girl never has anything to wear and Inderdeep Bains wanted to look her best for her date, she turned for help to her father’s famous fashion designer cousins.
Sisters Jazz and Suki Mahil, 30 and 29 respectively, have established an upmarket fashion house, Jasuma, with tailors in Delhi and their design studio in London.
The sisters have exhibited in London Fashion Week in the past and are due to appear in Paris. They inherited their skills from their mother, who has had a boutique in London. Jazz moved to India for five years so she could master the business.
“We do luxury end clothes and have a big market in the Middle East,” says Suki.
Inderdeep selected a “dazzling black and gold cocktail dress” made in georgette silk, Suki confides.
Not a £50 off the peg dress, then?
“It would retail for £450,” Suki corrects me.
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Street wise
Time was when Indian parents really struggled to take their British-born children to India. Now, the children head off to India, sometimes dragging their parents in their wake.
Take Manchester-born Natasha Kumar, 33, a talented artist living in north London.
How often has she been to India?
It’s easily 10 but she has lost count. She will soon be in Delhi and then in Kashmir, “which will be very emotional for me”.
This is because her father, Vijay Bhagotra, was a little boy who had to flee his home in Mirpur for India during partition.
“Many members of his family didn’t make it,” Natasha says.
In England, Vijay married an Englishwoman, Patricia — “both are academics, in cancer research”.
Two of Natasha’s brothers are doctors and a third is training to be one. Her father did not object when Natasha took up art, specialising initially as a printmaker, though she feels he would have been happier had she, too, gone into medicine. But he now proudly promotes his daughter’s work on his travels in India and elsewhere.
May be it was always destined she should become an artist. At 17, her work was displayed at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, just below entries by her grandfather, Peter Todd, and her uncle, Pip Todd Warmoth, both established artists.
Although Natasha describes herself as “more British Asian than Anglo-Indian”, her affinity for vivid pigments, which she often applies on her screen prints, is certainly very Indian.
She will soon have a solo exhibition of her Indian work at Asia House in London. It is the bewildering street signs in India that fascinate her. If people in India stopped to look, they would probably agree with Natasha that it is often art.
Tittle tattle
Mossad invariably gets its man. The Israeli secret service is being held responsible for slipping into a luxury hotel in Dubai using the stolen identities of British, Irish, German and French passport holders and strangling to death Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas commander.
What this suggests is that the Pakistani controllers who were behind the slaughter of the Jewish residents of Mumbai will also be targeted by Mossad — especially if they are unwise enough to venture into Dubai.
