So the next time around, the two decided to go down the exact same route. The result is Om Shanti Om. It could as easily have been called Main Hoon Na 2. Because, for the price of one ticket; you get two Shah Rukh Khans. You also get the whole 70s thing again, only more so, via Subhash Ghai this time, rather than Manmohan Desai.

Om Prakash Makhija aka Omi (SRK) is a junior artist, who hangs out on the sets with his best pal (Shreyas), in the hope of that big break. His ever-loving mom (Kirron) just knows, in her maa ka dil that he will be a big star. When he is not 'struggling', he is busy adoring Shantipriya (Deepika), the biggest heroine that ever set foot on a red carpet. They meet, and they part, for ever more, in true Bollywood style.

Thirty years on, the genial Omi is reborn as superstar Om Kapoor (SRK), the bell-bottoms and big-collared shirts replaced by distressed jeans and ganjis, and an I-care-a-flying-f attitude. And then one day, his past life comes swarming back, in the shape of the villain of the piece, the evil producer Mukesh-call-me-Mike (Arjun). The mom and friend, all wrinkled and grey, show up, as well as lissome wannabe leading lady Sandy, a startling Shantipriya look-alike.

Clearly, all the dramatis personae have had a lot of fun making this movie. The first half is a terrific technicolour romp, with everything in place: the super-sized sets, the in-house jokes, and the pokes at all the king-sized stars of the 70s, especially Rajesh Khanna, whose famous adas are aped mercilessly. “Tum bhi apna surname badal kar Khanna, Kapoor ya Khan kar lo, star ban jaogey”, says Shreyas to SRK. It's all nudge-nudge-wink-wink, and very funny, especially one hilarious sequence when SRK hams it up madly as Rajnikanth-the- Rascal, double-barrelled moustache, gun and all.

Post interval, OSO turn into a bit of a bore (too much repetition, and Farah needs to learn about climaxes: the 70s Ghai could teach her a thing or two in that direction), but by then it doesn't really matter. We have been programmed into like-laugh-out-loud-like mode. SRK, needless to say, is superb. There is no one who can do his combo of I'm-a-regular-guy-but-hey-I'm-the-king better. And newcomer Deepika is a star too: she pulls off, with just a few false steps, her pre-punarjanam avatar of a Hema Malini-like Dream Girl.