CBB Shilpa Launches Her Own Charity

Celebrity Big Brother winner Shilpa Shetty is launching an Aids charity - and the Bollywood actress says she will donate all her winnings from the reality TV show to it.

The charity will be called the Shilpa Shetty Foundation.

Shilpa, at the centre of an international controversy about racist bullying on the show, told Sky News: "Aids is a subject very close to my heart.

"India has the second largest number of Aids sufferers in the world. All my Celebrity Big Brother winnings will go into the foundation."

The actress played an Aids patient in the recent film Phir Milenge, which won her critical acclaim.

Her announcement came after she visited the House of Commons in London as a special guest of Labour MP Keith Vaz.

The Bollywood actress said: "It feels great (to be here), it's such an honour."

She joked near Big Ben: "This is what we always see on the postcards."

At the height of the racism row inside the CBB house, Mr Vaz raised the issue in Parliament after a record number of viewers complained to the TV watchdog Ofcom.

He said: "We would not tolerate this kind of racism on other types of television programmes and we should not do so on a programme that is watched by millions of people."

The race row caused an international diplomatic incident which threatened to damage Britain's reputation abroad.