Shilpa Shetty - The Biography. Julie Aspinall
Contents
Title Page
1 Beauty and the Bigots
2 January 2007
3 About the House
4 Two Weeks In
5 The Countdown Begins
6 And the Winner Is …
7 Outside the House
8 She Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby
9 Shilpa Makes the Grade
10 Love Hurts
11 Nightmare
12 Not Just Lashes and Lipstick
13 Television Beckons
14 She Who Laughs Last
15 And the Winner Is … (Part II)
Filmography
Copyright
The world watched aghast. On the television screen, two young women were pitted against one another: one, a tall, slim Indian woman in her early thirties, her face a picture of disbelief; the other, shorter, dumpier and younger, had her face twisted into an animal-like snarl. ‘Your head’s so far up your arse you can smell your own shit!’ she hissed, utterly unaware of how she was coming across to her fellow housemates, the television audience and, most damagingly of all perhaps, the outside world.
For this was the culmination of days of bullying, aggressive behaviour from Jade Goody, Danielle Lloyd and Jo O’Meara, three housemates on Celebrity Big Brother, broadcast in January 2007, towards the beautiful Indian actress in their midst, Shilpa Shetty. The three of them sounded like fishwives – and that is the charitable view – shrieking out racist abuse, clearly beside themselves with jealousy directed at the woman who was everything they were not.
Concern – and fury – had been mounting for days now at what seemed like a display of racial hatred developing on their television screens. Not only did Jade seem to be about to destroy herself but it also looked as if the abuse was on the verge of causing a diplomatic incident. On a visit to India, Chancellor Gordon Brown was clearly livid. Commenting on the furore, he hoped the message that ‘we are a nation of fairness and tolerance’ came across and added for good measure that the bullying was ‘offensive’.
In fact, the timing of Mr Brown’s visit to the subcontinent couldn’t have been worse. While clearly wanting to pontificate on matters of international politics, he was not allowed to get away from the only subject everyone was interested in. ‘I understand that in the UK there have already been 10,000 complaints from viewers about these remarks which people see, rightly, as offensive,’ he said. (In fact, the complaints were ultimately to top 40,000.) ‘I want Britain to be seen as a country of fairness and tolerance. Anything detracting from this I condemn.’
It was quite incredible that matters had come to this. Politicians from both Britain and India had got involved: Treasury Minister Ed Balls said he was ‘ashamed’ of what had happened and that ‘the image it projects of Britain around the world is appalling’. It certainly was. Demonstrators had taken to the streets in India, burning an effigy of the makers of Big Brother and carrying banners that read: ‘Death to Big Brother’ and ‘Do not treat our Shilpa unfairly’. The Indian Junior Foreign Minister Anand Sharm announced there would be a formal complaint, adding, ‘Racism has no place in a civilised society.’
But it was only too evident in the Big Brother household. For several days now, the three women, with Jade’s boyfriend Jack, had been making Shilpa’s life a misery. She had been described as a dog and told to pick chicken bones out of the lavatory with her teeth. Jade’s mother asked her if she lived in a shack; she had been derisively referred to as the ‘Indian’; there was speculation as to whether she ate with her hands and, after preparing food, she had been insulted by Danielle commenting that you didn’t know ‘where those hands have been’. All this was directed at one of the most famous actresses in Bollywood – it was a stomach-turning spectacle and one which showed no signs of coming to a halt.
And it had all begun with a most unlikely cause – a chicken. Shilpa had been roasting a chicken, which turned out to be underdone, prompting a barrage of insults from her housemates, who had already shown signs of being extremely prickly towards her. Much has been made of their racist slurs, but it was clear that what really lay behind the problem was that old British chestnut: class. Shilpa was classy, well educated and, what seemed to be a particular bone of contention, had servants – quite a lot of them, in fact. None of the girls baiting her, along with Jack, seemed able to bear this. Jo remarked that people in India must be slim because their food made them ill, being always undercooked. ‘I don’t trust that chicken,’ she said. ‘I want to eat it but I’m scared.’ Danielle, who had previously distinguished herself by referring to Winston Churchill as the first black American president, commented, ‘I love Indian food, but I think it probably tastes better in the UK. Is that right?’ Other comments included, ‘They eat with their hands in India, don’t they – or is that China? You don’t know where those hands have been.’
What was probably the case – and the girls in their dim way sensed this – was that Shilpa was not used to cooking as she had always had servants to do it all for her and therefore was not sure about the way a chicken should be cooked. But such was the furore created by the episode that her mother felt compelled to defend her afterwards. ‘You know, I microwave a meal in 15 minutes and that includes the spicy masalas,’ she said. ‘Did they not have a microwave in that place? That is how we cook in our home and Shilpa is used to doing it that way. She should have left it to them to prepare their meals.’
Certainly, Jade’s venom seemed to be getting worse by the minute. ‘She’s apparently some Bollywood actress, but I’ve never heard of her,’ she snarled. ‘For all I know, she could be someone off the Old Kent Road. I’ve seen how she goes in and out of people’s arseholes; I’ve seen her whispering, laughing, behind each other’s backs! She is fucking sly. I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her! She isn’t genuine.’
Not to be outdone, her boyfriend Jack added, ‘We should lock the door and put her out in the garden.’
It was unbelievable that matters had been allowed to get this far. When Shilpa had been bleaching her facial hair, Danielle asked, ‘Do you get stubble?’ She later added, ‘She wants to be white. She’s a dog.’
Of course, Shilpa, who easily outshone every other woman present, was anything but, as Danielle was well aware. But her vindictiveness and jealousy were driving her to further extremes, which got nastier as the show went on.
Jade, certainly, seemed to be quite obsessed with Shilpa’s background. During a row about an Oxo cube, which escalated totally out of proportion to the actual subject matter, she became hysterical. ‘You’re a fucking loser and a liar; you need a day in the slums!’ she screeched. ‘Shut the fuck up! Who the fuck are you? You aren’t some princess in Neverland, you’re a normal housemate like everyone else!’ She also referred to her as ‘Shilpa Fuckawallah’, ‘Shilpa Durupa’ and ‘Shilpa Poppadom’.
Indeed, at some points, matters almost became surreal. Jade said, ‘She makes me feel sick. She makes my skin crawl.’
Later, it was far worse when Jack said, ‘I don’t like her. In fact, I hate her. She came into this house … fucking ****!’ There was intense speculation he’d used the