Asian Power Couples
Lolita Chakrabarti & Adrian Lester
Lolita Chakrabarti is an English actress and writer based in London best known for her role as
WPC Jamila Blake in the long running ITV drama The Bill. Her play Red Velvet premiered in 2012
at the Tricycle Theatre, London, and won her the Most Promising Playwright accolade at the
2012 Evening Standard Awards. She also won the award for Most Promising Playwright at the
Critics Circle Awards in January 2013.
Lolita Chakrabarti & Adrian Lester
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Adrian Anthony Lester OBE is a British actor, director, and writer. He is best known for playing
a big-time con artist named Michael “Mickey Bricks” Stone in the BBC TV series Hustle between
2004 and 2012. He played campaign manager Henry Burton in Mike Nichols’s 1998 film Primary
Colors, in Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000) and The Day After Tomorrow (2004). Adrian was awarded
an OBE in 2013 for services to drama
Bhanu & Simrin Choudhrie
Bhanu Choudhrie has been the Executive Director of global investment company C&C Alpha
Group since 2001 - the group has a vast portfolio of investments, from spa hotels in India and
Mauritius to care homes in the UK. Born in Delhi, India, he studied International Business and
Marketing at the University of Boston and later moved to London. He is also a Trustee of a
United Kingdom registered charity Path to Success which was founded by his family.
Indian-born Simrin Choudhrie is an interior designer who set up Bach Interiors Ltd in 2006.
Since moving to the UK, Simrin has continued her charity work and in 2010 appeared on
Channel 4’s ‘Secret Millionaire’ show, donating a six-figure sum to homeless charity St Wilfrid’s
Centre in Sheffield. Simrin has been a Trustee of Path to Success since its formation in 2005.
Lord Meghnad Desai & Lady Kishwar Desai
Lord Meghnad Jagdishchandra Desai is an Indian-born British economist and Labour politician.
He gained his Economics BA and MA at Bombay [Mumbai] University and carried out his
doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the London School of Economics in 1965
and established the Centre for the Study of Global Governance in 1992. Lord Desai has been a
member of the House of Lords since 1991 and was made Emeritus Professor of Economics at
LSE in September 2003.
Lord Meghnad Desai & Lady Kishwar Desai
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Kishwar Desai (née Rosha) is an Indian-born author and columnist. She started her career
as a print journalist and worked as a political reporter with the Indian Express moving on to
television and broadcast media where she worked for over two decades. Kishwar Desai has
written four books, her first novel, Witness the Night won the Costa Book Award in 2010 for
Best First Novel.