Salman still takes pocket money: Farah

Director and choreographer Farah Khan is ready to take on her new role as chat show host. Her show Tere Mere Beach Mein gets celebs and the ‘aam aadmi’ together for entertainment packaged with a social message.

Says Farah, “I had been getting offers for such shows for a long time, but I wanted to do something meaningful. I wasn’t keen on doing a typical celeb show also because it has already been done quite well by Karan (Johar, who hosted Koffee With Karan) and Simi (Garewal).”

The director, who has the A-list of Bollywood as her close friends, admits, “For the first season, the channel was keen to get celebs as this would get the show more attention ... and I guess this will help us pass on the social message too more effectively.”

Viewers can look forward to watching several celebrities on the show, like Bipasha Basu, Shilpa Shetty, Shahid Kapoor, Genelia D’Souza, Salman Khan and of course, her favourite producer, actor and pal Shah Rukh Khan. But, with a twist! Each show comes with a theme where the celebs are put on the same platform as the common man.

Farah explains, “Shilpa and Bipasha are daughters who have taken on the responsibilities of their families, traditionally a son’s role. With them, we had a girl from a chawl, who is working to pay off her father’s debts even as her two brothers do nothing to help.”

Genelia and Shahid, stars who got a second shot at shining on the Bollywood marquee with Jaane Tu.. and Jab We Met respectively, come in the segment on “second chances” and were accompanied by a paraplegic who had built himself a car which he could race on the tracks without using his legs. “Genelia was so moved that she broke down and we had to halt shooting till she recovered,” reveals the newbie host.

And while Sonam Kapoor and Karan Johar come on the “weight” issue, as individuals who successfully lost tons of weight, Kareena Kapoor will feature in a segment where she talks about boyfriend Saif Ali Khan, and falling in love with someone from another religious community. Priyanka Chopra and boxer Vijender make an appearance as “small-town” folk who hit the big league.

The show will unveil a never-seen-before side to the stars, promises Farah. For instance, in Salman’s segment, we get to know how Bollywood’s superbrat is still a mama’s boy and chooses to lives in a one-bedroom apartment so that he can live next door to his mom. His father also tells us that the actor falls in love with actresses and then tries to find his mother in them!

The star, who is known to be generous to a fault, having recently been in the news for handing out Rs 25,000 to a beggar, also regularly runs out of money. Farah shares, “Salman is constantly distributing his money to help others and then finally ends up taking pocket money from his parents!”

The segment with Shah Rukh has him make an appearance with his mother-in-law and shows him for the “joru ka gulaam” that he is! “People will see him as a regular guy who also has a mother-in-law like anyone else ... on the show, he gives tips to the ‘ordinary’ man on how to stand up to his wife,” says Farah.

And, is husband Shirish Kunder a ‘joru ka gulaam’ too? Contrary to popular perception, she emphatically states, “While a lot of our decisions are jointly taken, Shirish is quite dominating.”

She’s nonchalant, though, on how she manages to manage triplets and a new show, “The show required me to shoot for barely two months for 13 episodes.”