Shilpa Shetty - The Biography. Julie Aspinall
from it: The Jackson Five won over Steps with 75 per cent of the viewers’ vote, while Shilpa, who had clearly enjoyed herself, remarked that this was the best task so far. The winners were awarded a gold disc, along with champagne and chocolate, although Shilpa’s confession that she had never heard the song she sang before was utterly mystifying to the rest of the housemates. But then again, why should she have? The fact that she came from a different culture was by now glaringly obvious and the fact that The Jackson Five were not famous in India was surely another indication of their differing backgrounds. It didn’t matter – it was one of the rare things that didn’t matter by this stage – but it was a graphic illustration of the fact that the housemates, to put it mildly, did not all come from the same place.
And the sniping was getting worse. Shilpa and Cleo had a late-night chat about why Shilpa didn’t like Paris. Shilpa declined to enlarge on whether she had ever been there with the wrong person, which was a relief to some viewers as at least it meant that she was speaking to one of the women in the house. The other three, who by now had turned into a thoroughly unpleasant little gang, seemed to be as happy to bitch about Shilpa behind her back as they were to cause unpleasantness to her face. Indeed, so unpleasant was it all becoming that there was open speculation on the outside that Jade might be turfed out (or, at least, that she should be). Still, none of the gang of three had any idea of the impression they were creating – it was left to the friends, family and business advisers outside to realise just how much it was all going horribly wrong.
Inside, Shilpa was practically leading two lives: as a housemate who was lively and got on with all the men, and a housemate horribly victimised by the women. Away from Jade and co, matters were fine, with Shilpa confiding to Jermaine that she’d like to tie the knot.
‘I wanna get married,’ she said. ‘I have done for a long time.’
‘Dirk would marry you tomorrow,’ said Jermaine. ‘He’s a nice guy.’
‘He’s a very, very nice guy,’ said Shilpa tactfully. ‘I want to get married … but to the right person. Not just because …’
‘He’s about to walk through the door,’ said Jermaine of Dirk.
Intriguingly for Shilpa watchers, she allowed herself to be drawn out on the subject of the men in her life. As a sex symbol in India, she had the rather intriguing task of presenting herself as infinitely desirable and yet also infinitely chaste (something else that set her aside from the British contingent), to date having never so much as kissed a man on screen. There have been various rumours about her private life, but very little of actual substance to go on. Shilpa is plainly aware of something else, too: that mystery adds to a person’s attractiveness and it is better not to tell all.
At any rate, talking with Jermaine, she was a little more open about her past than she had been to date. There had been one actor, she confided, who had wanted to marry her, but she hadn’t felt the same and so they split up. A few months later, he was engaged to someone else. Then there was a long-distance relationship with a musician, which ended because she was more successful than him.
It was then that the notorious chicken row finally blew up. The ugliness that it entailed has already been chronicled here, and the outside world was not alone in expressing concern – some of the other housemates clearly sensed that the gang of three was going much too far. Ian and Cleo both felt the need to talk to Shilpa about it, with Ian saying he thought she was being unnecessarily picked on.
Shilpa rose above it. ‘But I tried not to let it affect me,’ she said. ‘I don’t have anything against any of them.’
‘You haven’t done anything wrong, Shilpa,’ said Ian earnestly.
‘Maybe we eat food differently,’ she replied. ‘It’s just a culture clash.’
You would have thought that if the girls had had an ounce of self-awareness they might have brought a halt to the nastiness now, but that appeared not to be the case. Instead, matters rumbled on in the background, while Shilpa herself simply tried to get on with it. For a start, she expressed a desire to go to Yorkshire – and then worried that no one in Yorkshire would know who she was.
‘Of course,’ protested Ian. ‘Big Brother’s the biggest show on television.’ He was certainly right about how much her fame had already spread.
The flirtation with Dirk continued, although perhaps because some of the other men had by now jumped ship, he was in an unusually tetchy mood. ‘I’m sure girls’ dormitories are like this,’ he said. ‘This is such a girlie show – that’s why all the guys left. It drives you nuts!’
‘I’ve not driven you nuts,’ said Shilpa, sounding rather hurt.
‘No,’ responded Dirk hastily. He, too, was in a mood for confessions: it had been 15 years, he said, since he’d been properly involved in a relationship and even two years since he’d last had a date. Shilpa looked sympathetic and friendly but, again, didn’t take him up on it.
Another entertainment was introduced in the form of a ping-pong table. Alone among the girls, Shilpa played with Dirk, Ian and Jermaine. But the stress of being cooped up with one another for nearly two weeks was now plainly beginning to tell: a few people were looking fed up and tetchy. Circumstances were trying, to say the least, with everyone affected by the bad atmosphere in the house and not just Shilpa. Dirk was right; the feeling was of a particularly bitchy girls’ boarding school and everyone was beginning to feel a touch of ennui.
‘I miss my friends,’ said Ian. ‘I’m used to being away, that’s part of my job, but I’m not used to not having any contact. I miss my dog.’
‘I probably need to have my mobile surgically removed,’ confessed Shilpa.
‘It’s probably good that you’re not using it because of the radiation,’ Jermaine remarked.
Showing a quite extraordinary tolerance, given all that had gone before, Shilpa now started to try to explain the concept of the Hindu festival of Diwali to Jade. It was a valiant attempt, but one that didn’t stand a chance. Shilpa had just got to Rama, when Jade enquired, ‘Is that the Elephant Man?’
Shilpa, rather more politely than Jade deserved, informed her that she was thinking of Ganesha.
Even Big Brother, however, could not have foreseen the next bit of multicultural misunderstanding. The housemates were instructed to come up with a question they have always wanted to know the answer to, and Shilpa thought of a good one – which came first, the chicken or the egg? That was probably too clever for some of the others, though, and so Jo came up with an alternative. The following exchange ensued:
Jo: I’ve got my question – what is the life span of a sperm whale?
Shilpa: What’s the lifespan of a what?
Jo: Of a sperm whale.
Shilpa: Of a spom …?
Jo: A whale. A sperm whale is a type of whale.
Shilpa: A wow? What’s that?
Jo: Am I saying it wrong?
Jade (to Shilpa): Beached whale, killer whale … like a dolphin.
Jack: Have you seen Free Willy?
Jo: You really don’t know what a whale is?
Jack: In the sea …
Jade: You know what a shark is, don’t you?
Shilpa finally got it, knowing exactly what a whale was – she simply hadn’t understood Jo’s cockney accent. It did provoke a laugh. But by this time everyone was so sour almost anything could have done it, and later on Jade turned nasty again, although, at the beginning at least, she and Shilpa appeared to be trying to make up. Jade’s comments about Shilpa’s cooking were not personal, she