Shilpa Shetty featured in the Daily Star

The all-seeing, all-hearing night time cameras and microphones in the darkened dormitory picked out Shilpa Shetty sitting on the floor, where she has preferred to sleep rather than on the beds provided, eyes closed, both arms outstretched, long fingers counting the name of God — or possibly that of her makeup artiste, for all one knows — 108 times.

Here, it seemed, was the model daughter of Mother India keeping to the promise she had made as she entered Celebrity Big Brother House just after 9 pm GMT on January 3: “The one thing I really hope to keep is my self-respect and dignity. I just want every Indian to be extremely proud that I’m in here.”

Now, she brought her palms together in a Hindu pranaam, before slowly lying down, flicking her flowing, highlight-tinged tresses in a deft but voluptuous gesture over her pillow and settling for the night after loosening her pyjama strings. Those sad souls who stay up all night watching such movements find them both voyeuristic and erotic.

It is said that Shilpa, paid something between £350,000 (Rs 3 crore) and £65,000 (Rs 56 lakh) as part of her contract, was not the only Bollywood star considered by Channel 4 television. But for whatever reason, Lara Dutta, Kareena Kapoor and Malaika Arora-Khan fell off the list. Shilpa was briefed about what this reality television show entailed and was reassured there would be no cameras in the shower room or the lavatory (there are microphones, though).

Had Shilpa really wanted to prepare herself psychologically for the survival of the fittest in this cruel human jungle, she would not have wasted time in last minute shopping in Oxford Street, but instead read On The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin. Its message is that producers ensure that those who enter CBB of sound mind very quickly make the journey, Darth Vader style, to the dark side of their characters.

One assumed Shilpa, 31, sensed what another contestant, Jack Tweedy, all of 19 and perhaps with as many words in his vocabulary — he had called Shilpa a “w…ker” and a “f..g Paki” — was doing in bed, wedged up tight against his 25-year-old girlfriend, Jade Goody. The cameras caught it all.

In the words of the disgusted News of the World, Master Jack, denied full conjugal rights by Jade, ended up “taking matters into his own hands”. The Daily Star Sunday newspaper published the sequence frame by frame: (1) Jade: “Jack, I don’t want you to mess up the bed, go into the toilet; (2) Jade, irritated by the shuddering youth’s lack of restraint: “You f….g just did that all over me; (3) Jack: “I couldn’t help it.”

History repeated itself for back in 2002 when Jade, then an even more foul-mouthed dental assistant, was selected for the normal Big Brother series, engaged in sexual activity on camera. She didn’t win the contest but used her notoriety to carve out a lucrative career as a ‘celebrity’. This time, apart from Jack, she also brought her 48-year old “subnormal” mother, Jackiey Budden, into CBB House. From the moment of her entrance to her eviction, Jackiey targeted Shilpa, refusing to pronounce her name correctly and doing everything in her power to make life intolerable for beautiful of Bombay.

Jade and Jack speedily teamed up with two other working class contestants, Jo ’Meara, 27, a former singer from S Club, and Danielle Lloyd, 23, “glamour model” girlfriend of a footballer, in a merciless game of hunt “the Indian”. Instead of writing about the supposed differences between Islam and the West in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard might have occupied himself more usefully by concentrating on the clash of two cultures as represented by Shilpa and Jade & Co.

One contestant, the 79-year-old film director, Ken Russell, found Jade and her mother so distasteful that he quit the show. Describing them as “terrorists” and “evil spirits”, he said later: “There should be a Devil’s Island where we can send these people, they’re all going to Hell, anyway. It’s almost as though they’ve been programmed to be vulgar (Jackiey delighted in her flatulence), horrible and objectionable.”

Having drunk too much one night, Danielle (whose Miss Great Britain crown was taken away because she had been dating one of the judges, now her boyfriend, Teddy Sheringham, 40, and given to a British Indian, Preeti Desai, 24) disparagingly dismissed Shilpa as “just a cook” — the actress had been doing more than her share of the cooking — and that “she’s a dog”.

Danielle was initially seen as a dim but sweet “child woman” (Shilpa’s kind words), but the News of the World revealed last Sunday that she dumped her previous boyfriend, a gangster, for the footballer.

It is not just hundreds of thousands of Indian viewers, some of whom have voiced their support for Shilpa by ringing Sunrise, an Asian radio station, but ordinary British people, too, who have become increasingly uncomfortable with the racial fault lines inside Big Brother House.

Jermaine Jackson, 52, brother of Michael and once a member of the Jackson Five, has been on hand to comfort the sobbing Shilpa on more than one occasion. “It’s very emotional for her,” commented Jermaine in the ‘Diary Room’, where contestants are summoned regularly to receive instructions from the unseen ‘Big Brother’ or to make their confessions. “She’s the only woman of colour in the House and I’m the only man of colour.”

The behaviour of the anti-Shilpa gang was described as “shameful” by the American actor, Dirk Benedict, 61, former star of the A-Team, who has told Shilpa she — and especially her laugh — are beautiful and otherwise flirted (harmlessly) with her.

But underneath her makeup, to which she attaches critical importance, Shilpa has been nothing if not resilient. “Danielle is gonna regret hurting me tonight,” she muttered at one point.

On several occasions, she has commented on the presence of the cameras and has refrained from doing or saying anything that she feels could later be used against her.

She may not have the ranking of Aishwarya Rai or Rani Mukherjee, but the star of Baazigar, Dhadkan and Phir Milenge (in which she played an AIDs victim) cannot have survived in the Hindi film industry (another jungle) since her debut at the age of 17 without developing poison-tipped claws, hidden though they may be.

Such is the pressure cooker atmosphere inside the House that hate and love can alternate rapidly. Lying happily in one bed with the others, Shilpa was quizzed about one of the most pressing issues in international affairs — the attitude of Indian women to their pubic hair. Shilpa electrified her audience by disclosing that some choose to have it bleached a lighter colour, which puzzled Ian “H” Watkins, 30, a homosexual who once sang for a pop group called Steps: “How can you be dark upstairs — I don’t mean you (to Shilpa) — and blonde down there?” Jo was intrigued, too, not realising that the land of the Kama Sutra takes such trifling matters in its stride. “That’s like going to bed with Penelope Cruz and waking up with Cameron Diaz,” speculated Jo.

Warning bells clearly rang inside Shilpa’s head. Before she could be questioned about her personal circumstances, she dived under the duvet and laughingly protested: “I can’t have this.” Deprived of their normal possessions, contestants find that, however much they try, they end up revealing rather more of themselves — not necessarily in the physical sense — than they would like.

No one can act 24/7,” was the opinion of the Sunday Mirror columnist, Carole Malone, 52, whose eviction was blamed, incidentally, by Jade, Jack, Jo and Danielle on Shilpa. After spending 10 days cooped up inside as a contestant, Carole emerged to write a long piece about her experiences: “BB: The Truth.” She tipped Cleo Rocos, 44, an actress now long past her prime, to win, disclosed that “Jade plans to thump Shilpa” and that Jackiey might have launched a violent assault on the Indian actress: “There was a point where Jermaine and I were frightened that Jackiey might physically attack Shilpa.”

Though a couple of commentators have called Shilpa “a Bollywood bore” and “manipulative”, Carole summed her up thus: “Beautiful, imperious, a real lady. Bit bossy, but lots of fun with a huge heart...has promised to take me to Bollywood and has an earring collection to make your toes curl. Will last the course.”

Careful analysis of everything Shilpa has done and said since January 3 will be more revealing than any number of carefully controlled interviews of the type given to promote film releases, especially by email these days. She has dressed conservatively in Western clothes (there has been an occasional dupatta or shawl) but nevertheless the cameras have lingered over the contours of her taut figure, especially when she has been bending over the kitchen table while cooking chicken curry — she apparently never cooks at home. Viewers have seen her brush her teeth (next to Jade), don her shower cap, enter and shut the WC door, blow-dry her hair and shuffle round in large, fluffy, unsexy carpet slippers — all mundane stuff but representing invasions of privacy, however minor.

She has taught meditation, done a little Bollywood dancing, described herself as India’s Angelina Jolie, revealed her apartment occupies an entire floor in Mumbai, that she is addressed respectfully as “Madam” or “Ma’am” by people who “get up when I walk into the room” and that her maidservant makes her bed and gets a cup of tea every morning while she hops into the shower.

When taking part in a musical contest, Shilpa shrieked: “I’m a dancer, I don’t sing. I only lip-synch!” She baffled the women by plastering bleaching cream, used to disguise darker facial hair, on her face and even on the nose (on which, according to some Indian women viewers, she needs further engineering) to give it the same pale complexion as the rest of her appearance.

She reacted negatively when Big Brother ordered her to remove her dark glasses in the Diary Room: “It’s so mean that you’ve got me here without my makeup. Can I kill you? It’s worse than anything Jackiey said to me. Should have put it in my contract — too late now!”

She was unhappy to get rid of out-of-date chicken (“in India there are loads of people without food”) and explained she had entered the show because “people think Indian people are stupid and don’t speak English”. Danielle was amazed that Shilpa had apparently never eaten “roast potatoes” and Jermaine was stunned she had not heard of the Motown legends, Berry Gordy, Jackie Wilson and Stevie Wonder.

If Shilpa reviews all the tapes one day with a psychiatrist, she will realise her inability to deal with people she might consider children of a lesser God — Jackiey, Jade, Jack, Danielle — sits uneasily with someone who has come across as beautiful, graceful, elegant and quintessentially Indian. After one argument, when Jade shouted, “Don’t patronise me,” Shilpa affected her most superior tone: “Patronise is the wrong word, sweetie (one of Shilpa’s favourite and most irritating words). Learn the dictionary!” She certainly did not take kindly to Jackiey mispronouncing her name: “My name is Shilpa, Jackiey — get that right!”

She will be back in England, in Yorkshire, in June (for IIFA?) and was pleased to be reassured that people would recognise her now in the UK: “Really? Brilliant.” (The Daily Star, a tabloid, has covered the long-legged, short-skirted “Bollywood babe” endlessly, with lots of sexy pictures). In the Diary Room, when all contestants were allowed to ask one question, Shilpa’s was: “Is there life after death?” What she really meant to ask was: “Is there life after Celebrity Big Brother?”