CHARAN GILL IS NO SLUMDOG AS HE REVEALS PLANS FOR HIS NEW RESTAURANT
CUIDE RI CATHY – CHARAN GILL MBE
Monday 5 October, 10pm, BBC ALBA
From teaching Bhangra dancing to becoming Glasgow’s curry king, Charan Gill MBE reveals that he’ll not sit back even although he’s made millions.
In the latest programme of the Cuide ri Cathy series on BBC ALBA, Charan Gill treats Cathy MacDonald to a curry after a full day visiting his home, his new business and the charity that he supports, The Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice.
Charan jokes with Cathy about the Ashoka’s initial recipe for success, “At 10pm we would take an hour long break and go round all the pubs before they came out. The Ashoka, at that time, didn’t have very good ventilation so we used to walk in with a strong smell of curry....it was like The Pied Piper all following you back to the restaurant.”
Cathy gains an insight into Charan’s life after selling his empire of Indian restaurants four years ago, having done everything from appearing on the Secret Millionaire TV programme to performing stand up comedy, and reveals a very humble and humorous man behind the success.
When asked what kept him going, Charan said: “I used to have an old uncle, very wealthy who built up his fortune from nothing and was still working and I said why don’t you just retire? He said, if I was that way, I would never have built what I had in the first place, and I’m the same and would have stopped after the first million, as why does anyone need anymore.”
Not sitting on his laurels, Charan is due to launch his new restaurant next month called ‘Slumdog’ and Charan’s expectations are high: “I’m excited, for the first time in years.”
Allowing Cathy to sit in on a planning meeting for his new restaurant, Charan lets slip that in the old days he didn’t do planning. The front of the Kama Sutra building was ripped away and a new one put in and it was only when someone complained that he put in for retrospective planning, and got it. Charan said: “Now I do things a bit more by the book.”
Cathy, and her ‘Chookter’ friends as Charan described them, used to be a regular at his restaurant. Having read his book, Cathy is no closer to finding out what his secret to success is but Charan has no secret, he’s just a ‘risk taker’. Charan followed up his comments about taking risks by joking with Cathy saying: “You’ve got to take risks, okay they can be calculated risks but if you don’t take risks then you might just as well work in a normal job like yourself.”
Turning his hand to charitable work, Charan has a strong bond with The Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice. Charity work is hugely rewarding for Charan and he reveals to Cathy a few other projects, out with the work he does for the hospice, that he’s currently working on.
One is the establishment of two medical units in India and the other is a dairy farm that he set up there last year, which will eventually sustain itself. Charan believes: “A lot of people write cheques but the important thing is being able to see the end result whether it’s a child drinking a glass of milk or somebody getting a cataract operation, so for me it’s good that you can see the end results.”
CUIDE RI CATHY will be broadcast on BBC ALBA on Monday 5 October at 22.00 and is available on Sky channel 168 & Freesat channel 110.