The hits, misses & the mysteries
Dine with the stars organised by the Tollywood industry had some comical moments
Actor MLA Balakrishna hogged all the limelight he sang a few songs and danced the night away. An onlooker commented, with Balayya around nobody else gets a chance!
Actors Mahesh Babu, Pawan Kalyan, NTR Jr and Charan didn’t show up. While Mahesh Babu had another fund raiser event to attend, Charan, we hear, had a party at home. No one knew about NTR Jr.
Popular stars were given the red carpet welcome by the organisers, while the smaller, lesser known actors such as Sudhakar of Life is Beautiful fame and Nikitha Narayan of It’s My Love Story, were stopped at the entrance it appeared they were not recognised.
The tickets were supposedly priced at Rs 1 lakh each, but nobody seemed to know who bought them. While some said there was a crazy rush “online”, another source dismissed the report. Finally, it was producer K.L. Narayana who was entrusted with the task of selling tickets and off the record news is “he sold 75 per cent of them”. To who? No answer!
Actors Prabhas and Gopichand are long-lost pals, to this event too they came and left together.
Father-son duo, Nagarjuna and Naga Chaitanya came together, but while leaving Naga Chaitanya gave a ride to Samantha and Tabu, while Nag left alone in another car.
Comedian Brahmanandam, chose to walk in from a distance like an ordinary man and so Allu Aravind just assumed he was some “officer” coming in! When Brahmanandam came closer, he offered him his blazer.
All the technicians skipped the Saturday event as the organisers publicised it only as ‘Dine with your Stars’.
The organisers were unable to explain why the telecast rights were awarded to Gemini TV, when the channel Maa TV came forward with the highest bid.
Both these channels are controlled by the film industry people. Producer K.L. Narayana tried to explain that Allu Aravind (One of the directors of Maa TV) was also in the committee when they awarded the rights to Gemini and he didn’t object. Allu Aravind immediately denied it and said he suggested sealed tenders.