Tee much! Tanaaz Bakhtiyaar

Publicity-hungry Tanaaz Lal and Bakhtyaar Irani plant posters and distribute T-shirts with their pictures to poor kids to garner votes for Nach Baliye 2

It's not uncommon for television actors to do crazy things for publicity. And now, with Nach Baliye 2 round the corner, Tanaaz Lal and Bakhtyaar Irani have become even more proactive. The couple has got posters and T-shirts printed with their pictures. The two have started planting the posters at key locations in the city and are distributing these shirts to poor children at traffic signals. The posters and T-shirts also have a complete set of instructions on the voting procedure for Nach Baliye 2 along with the duo's pictures.

"Nach Baliye is not only about dance, it's also about your popularity quotient. Success in Nach Baliye depends not only on our dancing skills but also on the number of votes we garner. Tanaaz and I are working hard on our dance steps. We practice together for hours. But we didn't want to ignore the other important aspect — the voting," says Bakhtyaar.

The actor explains how Tanaaz and he came up with the idea of planting posters. "We had seen chef Sanjeev Kapoor's posters (for Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa) at a dhabha we frequent at Lokhandwala. That's when we decided to follow suit," he says. "Posters create awareness amongst those who don't watch TV. Tanaaz got the posters designed from a friend and we requested our friends to put up the posters at their shops. They gladly helped us. The idea behind the posters is to constantly remind people that 'we' are there and that they should vote for us. When such posters are put up at busy junctions, people may either discuss or dismiss them. But the idea is to make them recall this competition and us."

Interestingly, Bakhtyaar is not restricting this exercise to Mumbai alone. He intends to distribute T-shirts wherever he goes. "I am travelling to Dehradun next week. So I'll take some T-shirts to distribute there," he chuckles.


• "Success in Nach Baliye depends not only on our dancing skills but also on the number of votes we garner" — Bakhtyaar