Photoidol (www.photoidol.co.uk) is an exciting new web portal advertising a series of exclusive competitions with prizes irresistible to fans of Indian film stars, pop stars and other celebrities worldwide. The launch of the Photoidol website in the UK is timed to coincide with the autumn visit of Asia’s leading celebrity figure - Shahrukh Khan.

The main prize offered in the launch competition is an exclusive, personal meeting and photo session with Shahrukh Khan at a special event to be held in London. To meet as many people as possible, when stars of this stature arrive in the UK, they are generally escorted on strict travel and appearance schedules. Photoidol Ltd has secured a window of opportunity, which will allow enough time for a lucky few competition winners to meet these fascinating world-celebrities for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have their photographs taken together. Subsequent competitions will offer photo shoot prizes with other big name idols selected from the lengthening programme of participating Photoidol celebrities.

Successful Bollywood artists have been personally instrumental in the exponential growth of the Indian film industry in recent decades. Promoters take full advantage of opportunities for creating publicity for films and exposure for their stars through song and dance shows, events, appearances and concerts. Shahrukh Khan, voted the MTV youth icon for India 2005, says, "It will take a little time for people to understand that a film star of India is not just a film star, he's a rock star, an action and singing star and is all of them rolled into one, he's a walking-talking variety machine. ...this is how Indian culture and cinema works."

Bollywood cinema tends to transcend the market limitations of age, class and culture, so Indian film stars are global icons, some of whom have international fan bases as large as A-list film stars in the west. Increasing numbers of non-Asian cinema goers continue to discover and delight in the Technicolor world of Hindi song and dance, allegory, family values, convoluted love stories, emotional catharsis and happy endings. While initially the Photo Idol website is targeted primarily at the Indian/Asian market, additional celebrities in every sphere are being actively recruited for Photoidol appearances in order to extend the appeal of the competitions to reach the greater ‘mainstream western audience’.

In order to publicise the Photoidol website and the specific competitions running at any particular time, participating celebrity idols will make scheduled television appearances advertising the competitions in which they appear. These television advertisements will be complemented by radio slots broadcast nationally in the run-up to the competition closing dates. The Photoidol competition format is based around entries received by either a telephone call or via text. Each entry is qualified by answering a multiple-choice question. Winners are drawn at random from correctly answered entries. Competition entries are made either via an SMS text message to 80200 or by phoning the automated competition line on 0906 5154 201 and following the spoken prompts.

Full competition terms and conditions are available at http://www.photoidol.co.uk/competitions.html
The Photoidol competition telephone lines and premium rate SMS services are provided by Spread Media Ltd http://www.spreadmedia.co.uk

UK Press Contact:
David Shepard shepard@equinoxagency.co.uk 0870 243 3086