Bollywood’s profile continues to grow in post-Shilpa Britain with mainstream companies dishing out bolly-related products. There was the ‘Shilpa Shetty CD’ which featured her greatest hit songs, even though the songs are by ‘playback singers’ and most of the tracks were not even from Shilpa’s films. ‘Shilpa – the biography’ by Julie Aspinall was rushed into the bookshops priced at £7.99 and is now heavily discounted at Tesco for the bargain price of £3.79. Madame Tussauds unveiled a Shah Rukh Khan waxwork last month whilst Virgin is advertising flights to Mumbai with the tagline ‘’Bhangra in Bollywood’. Last week, Penguin released Shobhaa De’s 1991 bestseller ‘Starry Nights’ as ‘Bollywood Nights’.

The latest to hit the shops is ‘Bajao’, a DVD featuring Bollywood songs including a few by Shilpa. Why is a UK company releasing a Bollywood DVD? “The market is changing to suit different tastes and we recognise that change,” Claire Thornton of Wienerworld, the distribution company told me. Whilst it is great to see a Bollywood presence in the likes of traditional British high street stores like Woolworths and WH Smith, it is a pity that most of the material churned out is of such laughable quality.

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