A Very British Bollywood (BBC2)

LOCATION manager Lee had mixed feelings about being given a part in a new movie. "They just told me I have to shave my buttocks," he said.

His female co-star was more eager to please. "I don't mind showing my breasts if you want - it's all in the name of art," she told the director.

The scene, in which a pub landlord has sex with a barmaid, was being added to erotic comedy Private Moments because, after editing, the director discovered the movie ran for 82 minutes and he was contractually obliged to deliver an 85-minute picture. A three minute quickie sex scene was the answer.

This wasn't the type of East meets West fusion Chancellor Gordon Brown had in mind when he created tax breaks to make this country more attractive financially to foreign film-makers.

"It's going to open people's minds," was the government line. Instead it opened the door to Indian film producers to make soft core sex films like Private Moments.

I don't know what that movie turned out like - the bits I saw being filmed didn't make me hold out hope that this was another Titanic - but the documentary charting the making was very entertaining.

They couldn't have made it up if they tried. The crew arrived on London locations to discover they didn't have permission to film. The lighting truck failed to arrive because the driver was legally obliged to take an 11-hour break after a night shoot. The 24 Indian technicians, half of whom didn't speak English, worked 23 days in a row without a day off. And two actors playing a gay couple demanded an extra tenner each to kiss.

Jason Connery flew from Los Angeles at short notice when Steven Berkoff, in perhaps the wisest move of his career, pulled out. Mr Connery only had the flight over to learn his lines (and the number of fluffs on camera indicated he'd failed) and had to perform suffering from jetlag.

The cast also included Lock Stock's Jason Flemyng and Luke Goss from Bros. Fortunately they didn't have to participate in the sex scenes.

Nervous actor Xavier would have been messing his pants if he'd been wearing any during a seduction scene in a window cleaner's cradle 200ft up a skyscraper. Co-star Aruna was more confident. "We haven't fluffed our lines yet - and we don't have any lines in the next scene really". Just some heavy breathing.

Natasha recalled how, while filming a lesbian encounter on the bottom deck of a London bus ("move right down the front, please," as the conductor might have said), another bus pulled up alongside containing Japanese tourists. I bet they got some interesting photographs of the London sights.

The real stars were the three old ladies plucked from the pavement outside the studio to play - what else? - three old ladies waiting for a bus by a telephone box containing a couple having oral sex.

They weren't impressed with the acting. Too noisy they thought. In her experience, recalled one, it was usually "a stiff upper lip and don't wake the children".

HARROGATE'S FIRST £1m APARTMENT

NE MAGAZINE

Out on Wednesday