If stars like Aishwarya Rai (Bride and Prejudice), Shilpa Shetty (Celebrity Big Brother) and even a sexy starlet like Mallika Sherawat (Jackie Chan’s The Myth) are attempting crossover moves, stars from the West are also increasingly turning up in Bollywood movies. This week’s release, Namastey London, features British actor Clive Standen as Charlie Brown, a London millionaire who woos the leading lady.

Samantha Fox (Rock Dancer), Paul Blackthorne (Lagaan), Sophie Dahl (King of Bollywood), Emma Bunton (Pyar Mein Twist), Toby Stevens (The Rising), and Steven McIntosh (Rang De Basanti) have all featured in past Bollywood flicks. Why do goras (whites) want to act in Bollywood movies? It could be for the exotic experience or simply to enjoy a freebie five star holiday in Mumbai. It could also lead to being part of an Oscar or Bafta nominated movie as happened with Rachel Shelley (Lagaan) and Alice Patten (Rang de Basanti). None of these stars however have repeated the experience. Toby Stevens, recently seen as Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre, told me he has “hung up his bollywood dancing shoes for the time being.”

NRI’s (Non Resident Indians) are also jumping on the Bollywood bandwagon. Namastey London, which opens on Friday, features three actors who are phirangis (foreigners) with an Indian connection. Upen Patel, the newest wooden kid on the block, is a British Asian former male model from east London, Shaana Diya describes herself as a “mixed breed” whilst the film’s female lead, Katrina Kaif, remains vague whenever she is asked to clarify her, perhaps dubious, claim to being half-Indian.

I met up with the aforementioned Shaana Diya at a nightclub in London last month. I later asked her how a “half gujerati-half swiss” girl like herself got into the big bad world of Bollywood. “Serendipitously!” she replied, adding that she “did not consider herself a foreign girl in Bombay as it is as much home as London or Zurich.” So, does she fancy the film’s hunky male lead, Akshay Kumar, with or without his chest hair? “I’ll let his wife decide what she prefers!” Shaana laughed.

When is a promise not a promise? When it is made by Bollywood stars and directors. Time and time again I have suffered the disappointment of cancelled appointments when I have rearranged my schedule to accommodate visiting Bollywood stars in London, only to be told at the last minute that “they are not coming.” At the press showing of Namastey London held earlier in London this week, director Vipul Shah and lead actress Katrina Kaif were scheduled to attend a press conference. No prizes for guessing that they did a no show.

Is not showing up at all better than being kept waiting endlessly to interview the stars? At the Paheli press conference, Shah Rukh Khan kept me waiting for eight hrs before I finally interviewed him. Similarly, Preity Zinta kept over 40 journalists waiting at a central London hotel late last year. When Preity eventually arrived, she said “I am so sorry guys; I was stuck in traffic for four hours in Tottenham.” Did Ms Zinta get her cities muddled by any chance? I know the traffic in London can be bad but it is certainly not as horrendous as Mumbai where such an explanation would have come across as more credible.

Jagmohan Mundra, the director of Aishwarya Rai’s much delayed film Provoked, is a relieved man. The film is finally releasing on April 6, and a press preview was held at a plush central London hotel this week. The film had its debut at Cannes in 2006, so why the delay in its release? “It’s been an endless wait for me,” Jag told me, adding that the reasons for the delay “can be answered best by the producers and distributors who decided to coordinate a worldwide release.”

Is he going to the Aishwarya-Abhishek wedding? “I will go to the wedding if I am invited but my relationship with Ash is strictly professional, not personal.”

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