MUMBAI: Bollywood actor Shilpa Shetty has won the Celebrity Big Brother show in the UK by a majority vote of 63 per cent from the public. She stands to win £100,000 (Rs 8.64 million) in prize money.
Her career in Bollywood might not have been so ‘goody’ lately, but being on UK’s biggest reality show Celebrity Big Brother has surely done a world of good to the actor’s flanking career.
According to media reports, the actor has got an offer from Fox Movies to star in a Hollywood film. She has also been approached for a book deal as well as to host a cricket reality show in the UK. What’s more, a British tabloid has reportedly agreed to pay her £100,000 (the same as the booty she received on winning the show) for an exclusive interview.
In the show’s finale, Danielle Lloyd and Jack Tweed were evicted first from the show and were later followed by Dirk Benedict and Ian Watkins thus leaving Shetty and pop star Jermaine Jackson (Michael and Janet Jackson’s brother) in the Big Brother house towards the end.
On 3 January, 2007 when Celebrity Big Brother started on Channel 4, little did Shetty know what she was getting into! After being locked up in the Big Brother house for almost a month, facing the “Goody,†the bad and the ugly; Shetty has become the most talked about Bollywood actor (after probably the newly engaged star couple Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai).
Shetty, the first Indian celebrity to be on the show, shot to fame after another contestant – British reality TV actor Jade Goody – bullied and hurled racial comments against her on the show. The controversy was fueled to such an extent that even the governments of India and the UK got involved. What’s more, media watchdog Ofcom received more than 40,000 complaints about the alleged racist bullying in the series.
Shetty, on the other hand, survived two successive evictions votes from Big Brother and managed to capture a whole lot of sympathy from the public.
Today Shetty was one of the six remaining contestants. She faced competition from Jermaine Jackson, Dirk Benedict, Ian Watkins, Danielle Lloyd and Jack Tweed (Goody’s boyfriend). The last to be evicted from Big Brother’s house were former pop singer Jo O’Meara and actress Cleo Rocos.
This win marks the beginning of Shetty’s second innings in Bollywood and the world over. It now remains to be seen how the newly crowned ‘Queen Bee’ makes her future moves.
Also see Photoraphs of Shilpa shetty on Big Brother show
