Bollywood comes to town

He sells more records than Madonna and Britney combined, and has over 50 film scores to his name. Fittingly, his latest project is with his Western counterpart: Raman has written the songs for Lloyd Webber's new musical Bombay Dreams. 'Since Tim Rice and I started 30 years ago, there have been no new writers who have really made it. Everyone in musical theatre has been looking for a new star, and I think Rahman is the one,' announces Sir Andrew, while the restaurant staff line up to meet their hero.

London is Bollywood's second home. We love the colour, the kitsch, the larger-than-life culture. We're dancing at the monthly Bollywood Nights at the Cobden Club, and listening to The Very Best Bollywood Songs, which sold 40,000 copies last year, and its follow-up, Volume II, which is climbing the album charts.

We are even learning to cope with the three-hour-plus Bollywood films. The massively successful but not strictly Bollywood Monsoon Wedding has whetted our appetite; now we want the real thing. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham is one of several movies to have sneaked into the top ten over the past few months and has become the most successful Indian film ever in the UK. Lagaan, a historical epic based around an India versus England cricket match also made the top ten, and is up for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar later this month. By May, we'll be shopping for opulent Bollywood paraphernalia at Selfridges. The store is themed for the whole month with dancing, music, screenings and fashion shows, mainly because the store's chief executive, Vittorio Radice, is a massive fan.

'I love the extravagant romance, its contradiction and glamour,' he says. And if that isn't enough, Bollywood is even hard news: Lakshmi Mittal's interests, apart from Romanian steel, include a Bollywood satellite channel called B4U...

Feeling overwhelmed? Then you'll need a crash course in Bollywood, the world's most-watched cinema. The Bollywood studios, based in Bombay (or Mumbai), churn out 800 or so Hindi films each year - some good, some downright appalling. Their success is partly due to their special formula. There is always a hero. He must be young, good-looking and slightly mysterious. He always wins the girl. The girl, the heroine, must again be young, good-looking and most emphatically a virgin. She will gain the approval of the hero's mother, a grey-haired sage whose filial relationship borders on oedipal. A narrow-eyed, snarling villain will try to intervene. He will have facial hair. The plot is always the same: good versus evil, right fighting wrong. There is no kissing and absolutely no sex, but plenty of innuendo-laden erupting fountains and bees sucking up pollen from plump stamens. The obligatory 'wet sari' scene relieves some of the sexual tension with the hero and heroine frolicking around in a waterfall (only nuzzling, of course). Even Bombay Dreams is planning an on-stage pool for the Bollywood version of the wet T-shirt contest.

It is that simple. Bollywood doesn't do social realism; the poor don't want to be told how awful their lives are. They want escapism. And nothing sums that up more than the dozen or so musical interludes in each film. If you like happy endings, you'll love Bollywood. It is Titanic without the iceberg, Moulin Rouge! without the TB. Actually, with its kitsch routines and Taj Mahal backdrop, Moulin Rouge! is pure Bollywood and director Baz Luhrmann freely admits that this was his inspiration.

Comparisons with Hollywood are irresistible - and inevitable. Hollywood has its great dynasties, with the Barrymores and the Fondas; Bollywood has its own, with the Kapoors and the Samarths. Western celebrity spotters have Heat magazine; Bollywood fans have Stardust, India's biggest-selling gossip publication. We have on-set trailers; they have stretch buses. We have the Oscars; they have the Filmfare Awards where, along with the usual categories, there is an award for 'Best Villain'.

The actors are gods, and their fans take the business of adoration very seriously. Most worshipped of all is 59-year-old Amitabh Bachchan, a national institution who, as well as having acted in countless classic movies, also hosts India's Who Wants to be a Millionaire? In 1982, when Amitabh Bachchan was in intensive care for two months after a stunt accident, thousands gathered outside the hospital every night, praying for his recovery. One fan ran 800km backwards as a gesture to the heavens. The then Indian prime minister, Indira Gandhi, even visited his sick bed.

Bolly fans also love to loathe their villains, and jeer them in public - not really surprising since the actors stay in character during interviews. The hatred is intense. Pran Sikand, one of the most famous villains in the Sixties, ensured no one in Northern India called their son Pran for 25 years.

Fans tend to get obsessed with one star and rip off their look. They copy their dress, their haircuts, their dance routines, even the way they walk and talk. They mob them wherever they go. And they're not fussy. Chris England, an English actor with a minor part in Lagaan, recalls popping into an Asian video shop: 'You should have seen the joy on the shopkeeper's face as he scrabbled around for a pen for my autograph.' It's hardly surprising, then, that a Bollywood star's favourite London hotel is the Crown Plaza at Buckingham Gate - Her Majesty's security keeps the fans at bay.

Bachchan caused chaos over here when he unveiled his Madame Tussaud's waxwork a couple of years ago ? he was the first Bollywood hero to be honoured there ? and a subsequent walkabout meant that Brick Lane had to be closed off. Unfamiliar to most Brits, he was even voted the most popular actor of the last millennium in a BBC online poll. Laurence Olivier came second.

But can Bollywood go truly mainstream? Will there ever be a crossover movie, an equivalent to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Just maybe. Bollywood Queen, the first entirely British-directed-and-acted Bollywood film, is out this September. A cross-cultural Romeo and Juliet set in the East End of London, it could offer the perfect balance of East and West, and could make the leap from Southall to Southfields. The director Jeremy Wooding hopes Lloyd Webber's musical, premiering a couple of months before, will build up interest: 'His production should get people used to the music and open up their minds.'

The global population can't be wrong: these are the most-watched films on the planet. The people of Kabul can't be wrong: they blared out Bollywood tunes after the fall of the Taliban. We're only just catching on. After all, with so much of India already a part of British culture, the subject matter never feels wholly unfamiliar. If nothing else, Bollywood gives us a whole new set of celebrities to worship, and best of all, immersing yourself in their tittle-tattle isn't considered low-brow - Bollywood gossip is commonplace at the most sophisticated Bombay dinner parties. As the films get slicker, who knows? One day we could be describing Josh Hartnett as the new Hrithik Roshan - and not the other way round.

Bollywood versus Hollywood
Meet a Bombay princess

Film: Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham is showing at cinemas nationwide
Lagaan is being re-released in Cineworld cinemas (see cineworld.co.uk for details).

Selfridges recreates the Bollywood lifestyle throughout May with fashion, food, music and dancing. Bombay Dreams opens at the Apollo Victoria in June (for tickets, call 0870 400 0870).

Bollywood Nights is on the last Wednesday of every month at the Cobden Club (020 8960 4222). An exhibition of Bollywood posters runs from 26 June at the V&A (020 7942 2000). Balham to Bollywood, by Chris England, is published in April (Hodder & Stoughton, £11.99)