Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1997, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is an actor. Born in India of a well-to-do family, he never wanted to do anything else but perform.

After university in Delhi, he went to America as a Fulbright scholar and became the first Indian

to appear in a major role on Broadway and that first Indian epithet followed him

to England where in a succession of television and film performances,

Jewel in the Crown, gangsters, my beautiful laundrette,

and a passage to India among them,

he's become the first actor from his background

to be awarded the OBE. Big in Britain and huge in India where he's the star of many a Bollywood epic

he retains a belief in many of the precepts of his original Muslim faith.

I believe in the wisdom of God, he says, if you are a good man, the

governor will look after you. He is Saeed Jaffrey. And the governor's done you quite well,

really, hasn't he, he said? He has, he has all the Everest that I had

dreamed of climbing. He has tested my muscle power of my soul as well as my physical muscle power, but he has made me achieve all those

Everists. So therefore you must be a good man?

I hope I am.

I think it's very important to retain the curiosity of a child

for any artist, however old, and also the soul that the governor gave you. If you have these two, then you can't go wrong.

The character we normally think of you as I think is the the kind of Indian entrepreneur you know a bit of a rogue a bit like Jimmy

Sharma in Tandory Knights or NASA in Laundred you know naughty but nice I think are the sorts of descriptions that are in

do they bear any resemblance to the real sai-ejafri?

...