In the box seat

Born and bred in the UK on a diet of Bollywood, young Mohammad Ajmal was a pioneer of Asian entertainment in Europe in the 1980s. After working in banking for a decade, he's now back in the limelight, producing shows, driving fast cars – and loving it!

Some time in the late 1970s, a genre of folk music that once blossomed in Punjab's golden wheat fields was transplanted to the gritty industrial landscape of the British Midlands. It took root and flourished. An entire generation of immigrants from the Subcontinent embraced the pulsating rhythms of bhangra. They owned the music, mixing it with the sounds of their adopted homeland.

It was a generation that grappled with issues of identity – being governed by Asian value systems at home, which clashed with their lives as teenagers in modern England. They attended bhangra raves during the day, so they could abide by the evening curfews imposed by their parents. As nightclubs started buzzing in the daytime, Mohammad Shoaib Ajmal's career as a show promoter was born.

The 37-year-old recalls the era with fondness: British nightclubs filled with Asian teens, dressed in ethnic wear and dancing to bhangra. Outside, community leaders and self-appointed moral guardians waited with video cameras, or worse, petrol bombs to discourage this wanton behaviour.
Ajmal, a British Asian who was born and raised in the West Midlands, organised several such Daytimer concerts in and around Birmingham.

He was one of the pioneers of the Asian entertainment scene in Europe during the 1980s. Under the banner of A&A Promotions, Ajmal toured the UK with live bands and Indian DJs to various venues.

He braved the backlash from his family to continue promoting these shows. Then he took a sabbatical from the entertainment industry during the 1990s to work in banking and finance in London. However, the entertainment bug that bit him as a teen bit him again when he was well into his thirties. After relocating to Dubai, Ajmal, in partnership with Farhath Hussain, began to organise the mother of all events: Bollywood stage shows.

He and his business partner Raj Kundra recently launched S2 – the perfume inspired by Shilpa Shetty, which took the UK by storm and reached the number one spot within three weeks of launch. Shetty is also the star of Ajmal's latest production: Miss Bollywood, The Musical, a glitzy two-hour rollercoaster journey through behind-the-scenes Bollywood.
Having spent his youth working and being responsible for his young family, Ajmal is making up for all the fun he missed out on. Dressed in a sharp suit, accessorised by some Bollywood-style bling, this father of two is charmingly self-effacing.

“All the things I should have been doing in my youth, I am doing now,'' he says. “It's my mid-life crisis: I've had a bit of Botox and two hair transplants, the last one with [Bollywood star] Salman Khan, who forced me to undergo one. Then I went and bought myself a Ferrari. My son doesn't think any of it is cool. He wants to know why dad always has his shirt buttons open or why dad wears so many medallions.
“I like to think that I am getting younger. People may think otherwise.''

I
My life has been a bit topsy-turvy. I was a father at 22 and now that the kids are older, I have turned into a party animal. I don't wake up until 1 pm every day.

I was extremely rebellious as a teenager – the surest way to get me to do something was to tell me not to do it.

I believe a great event organiser has to have the ability to be calm and the superhuman ability to please everybody. It's a near impossibility, but it has to be done. A cool head and a diplomatic tongue are absolutely necessary.

The show that made me lose my hair was the one that didn't happen at Wembley. Our job was to get the artistes. We had sold the show to a local promoter who walked away at the last minute. It was nerve-wracking. The show was cancelled.

I originally came to Dubai to trade in consumer goods. Since then, we have diversified into a shipping and freight company and I also dabble in real estate. We came to Dubai because we were fed up with our life in the UK.

ME
Me and growing up on Bollywood:
I grew up in Dudley, a town just outside Birminghham in the West Midlands. I am a British Asian, born in the UK and my family originates from Pakistan. My father moved to the UK in 1969 and I was born the next year, almost a first-generation immigrant.

My father had a corner grocery shop. Even if I say so myself, I was extremely intelligent but never could put my mind to anything. I left school after having passed one O level. My teacher said to me, “You can take a donkey to the river but you can't make it drink.'' [Despite my poor marks, I gained admission to a college in Dudley, Birmingham.]

When I was growing up, Bollywood was really big. There were no video games or PlayStations – at least, the Asian community couldn't afford them. We weren't allowed to watch English films in theatres. [Our parents were recent immigrants who were unaccustomed to life in the UK.]
You felt different ... because of your food (habits) and little quirks like oil in your hair which Mamma generously massaged in every morning.

On weekends, we would hire a VCR and rent seven movies for £5. Then the whole family and all the neighbours – the whole mohalla (street) – got together and sat in my Dad's front room, watching the films the whole weekend. These were the Bollywood classics of the 1970s and 1980s. A sense of who I was ... (was) … shaped by watching those movies. They also helped define my value systems: what's good and bad, who are the bad guys and who are the good guys.

Me and Daytimers:
When I was at college, I got into the entertainment scene. I started promoting bhangra shows, Hindi film music shows and bands.

I think the main reason I got involved with these acts was to gain a sense of identity. In college, I encountered a group of young people who shared my culture, history and had similar thoughts. It was an instant bonding factor. So when we all got together, the next question was, ‘What do we do now?'
That was circa 1986, there weren't too many [Asian] acts, but they were predominantly bhangra.

The first show I organised was in Wolverhampton, just outside Birmingham. We booked a hall, sold tickets and before I knew it, 600 people had turned up. And we didn't know how to accommodate the numbers.

We started doing these shows not for financial reasons, but just for the thrill of throwing a party. The shows had to be held in the daytime, because a lot of the girls were not allowed out in the evenings and they had to be home by 5pm. So it started out as a daytime rave and grew from there. We moved on to bigger venues – again these were mainly daytime shows.

The growth in popularity brought its own problems. We had people .... from the subcontinent .... who were not too happy about these shows. (At one point) it even turned a bit political.
There were petrol bombs thrown at venues, the venues were attacked …

I first experienced this sort of violence when we had a show at a nightclub. A massive crowd has turned up and a group of opposers with video cameras began to film all the kids standing there. They told the kids they would show the film … [to the various Asian communities] so their parents would know what they were up to. The crowds began to disperse in fear. We called in the police, but there was little they could do as video filming was not a crime. At another venue, we were moving the sound equipment inside the van when a petrol bomb was thrown at it and the van caught fire.

But, with time, progress and our growing up (things changed). Our parents became more liberal, bhangra went mainstream and resistance to the shows withered away.

Me and Bollywood stage shows:
I met Farhath for the first time in 1993 in London. I was working in the city and he had just started doing Bollywood shows. We didn't get to work together much then – I was too busy being a responsible adult and working in the finance industry. But I was fascinated by what he was doing.

We renewed our acquaintance when I moved to Dubai five years ago. By then he had pulled away from the Bollywood scene. But when we met up, the idea of doing Bollywood shows seemed attractive again. We did the Himesh Reshammiya concert in Dubai, followed by the Rockstars concert, starring Salman Khan and Saif Ali Khan.

We toured the UK and Norway with the Rockstars concert. We also did the Himesh concert in the UK, which was a total disaster – I lost a lot of money on that. We attracted a mere 5,000 people. In contrast, the Adnan Sami concert at Wembley was a roaring success. Such a success that it had to be repeated the next day.

Me and my family:
I married very young, I was just 20. It was a love story straight out of Bollywood. I met my wife during one of my shows. I went to her place to drop off her tickets and she paid me by cheque. When I got home, I realised she hadn't signed it. My friend and I debated whether she had done it on purpose so I would go back to see her once more.

Anyway, I did go back ... and it turned out that it was the first time she had ever written out a cheque … and she didn't know that she had to sign it!

We were at university together and our love story blossomed. Despite parental opposition, we got married. It took many years before we were welcomed back into the family fold. We have now been married for 16 years. I have a son, Haris, 13, and daughter Imaan, 7.

Myself
How do you put these shows together? Take us through the process.

To stage Bollywood shows with A-list stars, you need to contact professionals. We are in touch with the Morani brothers [film financiers and owners of event management company Cineyug]. They have a fully-fledged team of dancers, choreographers and other crew as well as direct links with all the stars. Funnily enough, the stars themselves have a lot to do with it. Take, for instance, the story of how Miss Bollywood was born.

Shilpa Shetty was in Big Brother when Farhath and I were discussing how great it would be to do a stage show with her once she was one with the show. She was getting very popular at the time. We found out that the main contact is her mother, who is called Aunty.

Farhath contacted one of our friends Vijay Galani, a Bollywood producer, to set up a meeting with Aunty. Nobody expected Shilpa to win Big Brother. So when the show was over, there was a lot of chaos. Farhath is not a manager per se but he took on a managerial role to help Shilpa in the UK. Then she wanted to launch her perfume S2, I roped in my business partner, Raj Kundra, to back the venture. The perfume deal was signed.

But there are wheels within wheels in Bollywood. One evening I had popped into the Fairmont to have coffee with Salman [Bollywood actor Salman Khan]. We started talking about Shilpa doing the show, and it turned out that Salman had actually spoken to Aunty, recommending Farhath. So actually had it not been for Salman, Shilpa may have never ended up doing Miss Bollywood.

Nobody knows this, but that's the kind of person Salman Khan is – he won't take credit for anything. Just as a thank you, I am going to be doing a big charity show for him in Dubai for his charity foundation.

Have there been any disasters along the way?
There have been some hairy incidents. We once had the case of a big Bollywood star, who went out partying the night before a show. The next day, he couldn't be found. He turned up at 4pm at his hotel and fell fast asleep. He was well known for his temper so no one wanted to wake him up. Miraculously, at 6pm he made his grand entrance at the show.

With all these years spent dealing with Bollywood stars, I have become even more complacent. Everything happens in good time, it will get done – that's the Bollywood ethos and it has rubbed off on me.