Shah Rukh on the show (top) and its host Jonathan Ross

London, Feb. 7: Shah Rukh Khan explained a few mysteries of his personal and professional lives as he became the first Bollywood star to appear on the BBC’s flagship entertainment programme Friday Night With Jonathan Ross.

What was his children’s religion? Why didn’t he wear disguise while travelling unlike some others?

He got a laugh when he explained: “I tell everyone I have worked very hard to be recognised.”

Why did he not accept the quiz master’s role in Slumdog Millionaire that eventually went to Anil Kapoor?

“We (Shah Rukh and the producers) worked on the initial bit of the film,” the actor said. “I did not do it because the host is a little bit of a cheat and… a little mean. I had already done the show (Kaun Banega Crorepati) and so I said if I do it (the film) then people will say I do the same thing (on the quiz show). It was a great film.”

Shilpa Shetty had appeared as Ross’s guest in June 2007 but she was not invited as an Indian actress but as a victim of racism on Channel 4’s Celebrity Big Brother. It has taken until the 18th and final series of Ross’s 10-year-old chat show for an appearance by a Bollywood actor.

“My next guest is the most popular film star on the planet with fans literally in the billions — not millions, billions,” Ross said to applause from his studio audience of 250. “He is Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan.”

Shah Rukh, hair slicked back, was dressed in his customary black with possibly one shirt button too many left undone.

Some of the questions — on song and dance routines, the length of the movies and on the absence of explicit kissing and sex — were for British viewers new to Bollywood.

Shah Rukh said of the interval: “It’s the loo break.”

On sex and kissing, he said: “We want to cater to a 90-year-old lady and a nine-year-old kid.”

But norms were changing. “Now you have a lot of kissing and sex in Hindi films. Personally, I am awkward kissing on screen… there is no private moment on the set.”

Ross plugged My Name is Khan, gave its release date and showed a clip.

Shah Rukh acknowledged that the issues behind the film’s tag line, “My name is Khan… and I am not a terrorist”, were wrapped “in the garb of a love story”.

“There is a kind of message which is (that) the western world, Islam and how we are thwarting each other and destroying each other,” Shah Rukh said. “The time has come when we should do simple, nice things and bring this world to a better, peaceful order.”

When Shah Rukh observed that the main roles were those of a Muslim husband, played by himself, and Kajol as the Hindu wife, Ross stepped in deftly and asked about his own marriage to Gauri, a Hindu. How did they bring up their children, Aryaan and Suhana, for example?

Shah Rukh brought the house down with a quip: “We just confuse the shit out of them.”

A little more seriously, he said: “We have all kinds of prayers in the house and the other day my daughter came and asked me that somebody had asked her, ‘Are you a Hindu or a Muslim?’ and I said, ‘Confuse them further (and) say you are a Christian.’ I don’t know how they are going to grow up but one thing: (they should) respect all the religions.”

When Ross wondered about the time he was detained at New Jersey airport, Shah Rukh said: “It’s okay, the western world is a little worried now and paranoid and a little touchy and feely.”

He then told a joke about going through the new scanners at London’s Heathrow airport. “The new machines, body scanners… it makes you embarrassed if you are not well endowed,” he began.

When he emerged from such a machine, he claimed some female fans had been able to get hold of his revealing body prints. He may have been joking when he went on: “You can see everything inside… and then I autographed them.”

It is his ambition to work with Jackie Chan. “I love him. I asked him but he’s very expensive. I am going to try and speak to him in the next few days again.”

When Ross said that being in India for a big star like him was probably different from being in England, Shah Rukh disagreed — it was “just like being at home”.

He said: “(A) lot of Indians are here, a lot of Pakistanis – I see more Indians here than I see in India, actually.”

Ross drew the interview to a close with: “Ladies and gentlemen, I am sure you agree he is a superstar with very good reason — what a charming guest.”