It was a stroke of luck that brought Manish from his home in Holdenhurst Road to the airwaves of Delhi.

In 1995 he had been in India for six months looking for ethnic antique items to sell in markets like Camden and Portobello Road, when he was invited to a party that would change his life forever.

One of the other guests was the head of drama on All-India Radio FM, at the time the only bona fide FM station in India. After moaning about the poor quality of radio programmes, he was invited to audition at the station, which was looking for new 'radio jockeys', as they are called in India.

At his audition, he was asked to 'tone down' his English accent, but impressed them with his ability to pronounce international names such as Barbara Streisand correctly, and his fast talking particularly impressing them with his ability to say "Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers..." at an extraordinary speed.

"They said we'll let you know," Manish explained. "Two months later I thought there's been no reply', let me phone up. They said 'you passed [the audition] but we had no forwarding address' because I was just travelling around [India and Nepal].

"I started with the graveyard shift where they gave me a strange choice of things to do. From 1am to 4am I was playing what I liked Bob Dylan, long Pink Floyd tracks and then from 4am to 5am I would play Hindi religious music and from 5am to 6am, Christian religious music. I did that for about a year."

The show achieved something of a cult following among students in India and after a year he was poached by Times FM, a subsidiary of the Times of India newspaper, which bought airtime on All-India Radio, broadcasting on the same frequency.

"I was given a wonderful deal where I was allowed to work for both stations at the same time. I got a lot of coverage and in the space of about four or five months I was getting written about in the papers."

Basing his style on Steve Wright's old show on Radio One, playing a mixture of Indian and English pop music, he built up a mainstream following. He had slots on the station all week, most notably a 'stupid' comedy show on Sunday morning but it was his Saturday morning show that grabbed the most attention.

"The Saturday morning show was all gossipy," Manish explained, "what the stars are doing, what's happening in the world of fashion. It was co-hosted by a girl who's now my wife. Those two shows were very popular."

Manish and his wife Shabnam became the "Richard and Judy of Indian radio" he said as their relationship featured in the Indian papers. Magazines wrote about which parties he had been to and everybody got to know his name and his voice. He was even due to star in a Bollywood movie, but it fell through after someone ran away with the production money. He also appeared on celebrity game shows and wrote articles for national newspapers about fashion and music.

"My crowd changed," Manish explained. "The people I'm hanging around with are used to this sort of stuff. We're just so used to people staring.

"I believe I have a few fan clubs as well. I have had my fair share of hate mail too.

"Most people recognise my voice. An average man in the street may not know what I look like. I get recognised more when I open my mouth."

Manish, now 33, is back in Finchley for a few months looking at the possibility of getting radio or television work in Britain.

"There is not much more I can achieve there," he said. Shabnam is now a newsreader on the Asian specialist channel Zee TV and does a lot of voiceover work for television and is often heard on companies' "please hold the line" telephone messages for large corporations.

"She's become the voiceover queen of India," explained Manish. "Her career's going great guns there, but she's quite open to the idea of coming here."

In the meantime, Manish is getting re-acquainted with his old life of going to the pub with friends and just being an ordinary person.