Shilpa Shetty has had it with kissing on stage in front of Indians - a peck on the cheek is about the furthest she will go, even in London, she has made it plain.
LONDON: Nervous Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty has had it with kissing on stage in front of Indians - a peck on the cheek is about the furthest she will go, even in London, she has made it plain.
The last time she did it - during an AIDS awareness event in New Delhi with Hollywood star Richard Gere in April last year - furious Indian Hindu nationalists burnt her effigies and slapped court cases against her and Gere up and down the country.
Tellingly, Shilpa invoked memories of the Indian intolerance during a dinner held Tuesday night to celebrate and encourage diversity in Britain.
Stepping in to help galvanise a charity auction - the item under hammer was dinner with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at Wembley - Shilpa climbed up to the stage, took the mike and told her audience of London glitterati: "Come on people - this is for charity. The winner will get a kiss from me!"
With memories of the Indian protests yet to be erased, she then added quickly: "But it will be on the cheek. I don't want my effigies burnt again."
Starting off on a low £ 100, the prospects of dining with Brown and British sporting celebrities was moving at a slow canter before Shilpa stepped in with her incentive for the worthy cause of helping diabetes testing in Britain.
After being stuck on the £ 5,000 mark for some time, the bid was won by a young man who pledged £ 12,500 for the dinner - and also picked up three kisses on the cheek as a bargain.
Shilpa, who won the Global Diversity Award along with British racing driver Lewis Hamilton, met Prime Minister Brown earlier Tuesday when he congratulated her.
The auction raised over £ 63,000 for the Silver Star Appeal, a charity that runs mobile diabetes assessment units.
Indian-origin MP Keith Vaz, who launched the charity last year after being diagnosed as a diabetes patient, said the money would buy the charity's third mobile unit.
"One of these buses will be sent to India," Vaz said.
Tuesday night's auction saw a fierce bidding war for an item titled Bollywood Dreams - the heady chance to fly to India, meet superstar Amitabh Bachchan, bag a walk-on part in the movie "Teen Patti" and be shown around Bollywood City, to be followed by a calming tea with British High Commissioner to India Sir Richard Stagg in New Delhi.
It was won by Sri Prakash Lohia, chairperson of the Indian multinational group Indorama, who pledged £ 25,000.
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