Preity chats with Gillly

A jurno catches Preity Zinta yapping to Adam Gilchrist on a fight about 'classy' Cannes and the Valentino yatch parties

Not for nothing is she known as a motormouth in Bollywood. While returning from Dharamshala the other day, your diarist happened to be sharing the plane ride with Preity Zinta and her Punjab boys. And if we didn't have the arduous task of reporting faithfully to you, we would have, like Amitabh Bachchan in "Sholay", put cotton wool in our ears and slept through the hour-and-ten-minute-long journey while this Basanti jabbered away. So, here it is, Preity unexpurgated, talking to Punjab XI captain Adam Gilchrist:

Preity starts, "I guess I'll be seeing a lot of Shane Warne now. Elizabeth Hurley and me have a lot of common friends, so we keep seeing each other. She has this set of eight people who are always with her when she parties, and now I guess Shane will be one of them. Like for example Valentino's yacht party. We always bump into each other there. It's such fun and so classy. I heard Shane has three kids, so I hope what Elizabeth has with him is the real thing. I mean, I hope it's not like one of those relationships, because there are kids involved. But they are right for each other. It's important for the man to be, you know, not overshadowed by the woman in his life." (Gilly, one seat behind her barely gets in a hun-hunh edgeways, before she veers to the Cannes Film Festival). "Do you know about the Cannes Film Festival? It's really big. The French are really classy ' it's not like the Americans who are, like, more informal. It's, like, very glamourous and everything.

I have to carry all my dressy clothes and all that. There are just four hotels between which everyone is put up. So, like, you are having breakfast and turn around and there is Leonardo Di Caprio. Look right and there's Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. I mean if you are not an actor yourself, it can be quite dazzling to see all these big Hollywood stars there. There's this hotel there called Le Cannes which is where all the big stars stay when they don't want anyone to find out what they are up to. It's very private. At the hotels in Cannes, if you say 'Come on, hurry up', they don't care. They will take their time and do it like it should be done."

(Gilchrist, by now has the glazed look of a long-leg fielder during a Dravid double century, but Preity is undeterred). "Did you see Shaun's (Marsh) expression last night at the party? He's got this, like, totally blank expression when he's high. Which is quite incredible actually. I've never seen anyone look so completely blank when they are drunk. It's amazing, really. I wish some Indian actor could copy that look, it would be just incredible. Just no expression. I'm an actor and I keep observing people and their reactions to figure out what they are thinking. There's only so much you can do on your own so you have to keep learning. Art imitates life. But I can't read anything from Shaun's look...(By now she is perched on her knees on the seat and literally talking down at Gilly.) "Did you know I don't have a manager in LA? I used to have one, but now I don't. I'm looking for a manager in LA who can handle some international projects for me. LA is wonderful. They have something called sleep dentistry. You just go there and they put you to sleep and go 'drrr' and by the time you wake up a few hours later, you have a whole new set of teeth. I mean, whatever you want them to do."

(Gilchrist, looking away in the middle distance, seemed to be mulling over the virtues of sleep dentistry at this point).