From Celebrity Big Brother to getting kissed by Richard Gere, Shilpa Shetty is not so much killing her career as throttling it with a giant bangle earring.

To anyone who lives on a diet of reality TV and reality TV, Shilpa Shetty is the only Bollywood actress in the history of the world. She has made every single Bollywood movie by herself, starring alongside herself and featuring herself in a cameo role. Though none of them are in English so they do not count as proper films anyway.

For those endowed with an ability to read subtitles or understand Hindi, Shilpa is an icon of the Mumbai film industry. Think a chic Angelina Jolie with fewer kids and fewer tattoos, and who probably smells better too. And who doesn't get arrested in airports, despite what some people say.

Since being racially slurred by Kermit the Frog’s morbidly obese albino sister on Celebrity Big Brother, Shilpa has been in and out of the press for things less lovely than being a non-threatening Hindi to petrified middle class white people.

In April of this year, Shilpa was in New Delhi promoting AIDS awareness when actor Richard Gere, a veteran of such classic films as Yanks and Dr T and the Women, flew down from his makeshift Buddhist temple in LA and kissed her several times on the cheek. Because Gere is 120 years old, this is disgusting. Members of Hindi Nationalist group Shiv Shena agreed, promptly burning effigies of Gere, claiming his actions were immoral and obscene. A week later warrants for Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty’s arrest were issued by an Indian Court.

However despite media reports to the contrary, Shilpa was not subsequently arrested, questioned or detained at Mumbai Airport regarding the matter.

Shilpa Shetty's UK Spokeswoman Teji Singh picks up the story:

“There was absolutely no detention, no arrest whatsoever. She was rummaging through to get her paperwork and just stepped aside to a side room so she wouldn't block the queues. She wasn't crying. She was bunged up with the flu and she was only in there for eight to 15 minutes.”

Legal action against Shilpa for suffering Gere’s dribbly old man lips is currently suspended by the Indian Supreme Court. In short, she has weathered both an encounter with bigoted Jade Goody, who had probably confused her with someone who once ran a stall in EastEnders, and a kiss from a man who squints so much his eye sockets are currently digesting his own head.

With an unwarranted level of decorum, Shilpa defended Gere’s insensitive display of affection by saying:

“So much has been blown out of proportion.”

This is not to say that after the kiss Shilpa was not physically sick and immediately transferred to a specialised medical wing of New Delhi General for the potentially infectious symptoms of Elderly Hollywood Actor Suffering From a Temporary Bout of Tom Cruise Twat Syndrome, but this is not to say that she wasn’t either.

Read More:

BB winner Shilpa was 'not arrested' – The Press Association