July 9, 2010 (Sampurn Wire):The occasion was announcement of “Kaun Banega Crorepati 4′ with Amitabh Bachchan as its host. However, even Bachchan knew beforehand that he won’t be asked questions about the show alone. Plenty of water has flown before Big B arrived in the KBC 4 boat.

Despite repeated denial by Sony and Siddharth Basu, the truth remains that Aamir Khan was their first choice to host KBC 4. (Though no formal offer was made to Khan) Bachchan couldn’t escape being asked whether he was comfortable agreeing to host a show, which was earlier offered to Aamir Khan.

“I have no idea who was before me. All I know is that Sony came to me and I said “yes’ to them”, chided Bachchan. Sony business head Ajit Thakur and Siddharth Basu came to his defense claiming that Bachchan was their first and only choice. Basu literally pleaded to everyone to put an end to all speculations.

It was then that Mr Bachchan left the reporter speechless saying, “Looks like you don’t want me to be here in the first place. I will merely do my job. You can shower appreciation, if you like or else you’re free to criticize”.

TRPs ratings skyrocketed when Mr Bachchan hosted season 1 and 2, but it wasn’t the same when Shah Rukh Khan hosted season 3. When asked why KBC 3 failed, Bachchan said, “I don’t agree with you. KBC 3 didn’t fail. Shah Rukh did a wonderful job. TRPs is something which I don’t understand”.

(Interestingly, Bachchan had once claimed that he hadn’t seen KBC 3. He’d boasted about the TRPs of KBC 1 and 2 on his blog)

Finally, attention turned to Salman Khan. It’s no secret that the advent of KBC 4 has pushed Salman Khan’s “Dus Ka Dum’ till next year. Obviously, it was unfair to ask Mr Bachchan this question. Ajit Thakur was pretty vociferous when he said, “”Dus Ka Dum’ hasn’t been pushed. Besides, we never announced that the show is going to be launched in August. There has been no alteration in its schedule”. (Thakur was right; “Dus Ka Dum’ wasn’t slated for August. In fact, it was earlier supposed to come in July)

“Don’t worry, you can log on to my twitter or blog to know when it (”Dus Ka Dum’) will be launched”, Big B said jokingly.

The superstar sealed his lips when asked about the reasons for the failure of his son’s film Raavan. (In his tweet, Mr Bachchan had found fault with the editing of Raavan).

“As said before, I’ve been given a list of do’s and don’ts. This questions figures in the latter. I’m afraid, I can’t be answering this”, so said the father of Abhishek Bachchan.

Rightly said Mr. Bachchan, but don’t worry we’re not editing the above line from our copy. We’ve had enough of Raavan and other nonsense; it’s time to talk about KBC 4. Let the game begin.

–Mayur Lookhar/ Sampurn Wire