The dreamboat years... Amitabh Bachchan in Anand.
Amitabh Bachchan is the most successful Indian film star of all time. Now 65, he has been acting since the late 1960s and starring in movies for more than three decades.
For those who are not familiar with Indian cinema it is hard to convey just how monumental a figure Bachchan is - he has no parallels in Hollywood. The nearest comparison I can offer is someone like Paul McCartney who has a body of work which has taken decades to produce and has delighted hundreds of millions, who occupies a godlike status in popular culture and who still continues to produce new material.
The first time I saw an Amitabh Bachchan film was during the early 1980s. In those days there were hardly any Asian faces on television; this was the era when we had to be grateful for Mind Your Language and It Ain't Half Hot Mum. And then one afternoon Channel 4 broadcast Sholay, in which Bachchan and Dharmendara play two convicts hired by a retired police officer to capture a bandit chief who has been terrorising the village. Inspired by the westerns of Leone and Ford, Sholay is the highest grossing Indian film of all time and spectacularly entertaining.
From that moment on I became a hardened Amitabh Bachchan fan. Every weekend my father would take me to Luton town centre where we would hire a video player for five pounds for two days and then pick out three or four Bachchan films at 50p each to watch during the weekend.
Bachchan often played angry young men who stood up against authority and fought for the common man while still having time to woo the leading lady and sing a few songs. I can honestly say I cannot remember being happier than as a young teenager on Saturday and Sunday nights in front of the television watching films like Coolie, Naseeb and Yaarana.
If someone had said to me then that 25 years later I would have the opportunity to interview Amitabh Bachchan I would have dismissed the suggestion as about as far fetched as an Indian film storyline. And yet earlier this week I did indeed sit opposite Mr Bachchan and discuss his latest film as well as his extraordinary career. You can listen to the podcast of our encounter here.
