Vishal Dadlani plays Princess Diana at CWG

Vishal Dadlani's band Pentagram performed a gig at the Commonwealth games, pretending to be Princess Diana. The act was a spoof that took digs at CWG chief Suresh Kalmadi.

How do you turn a political faux pas around on its head? Ask Mumbai’s electronic rock band Pentagram! Vishal Dadlani, Randolph Correia, Papal Mane and Shiraz Bhattacharya performed at the Commonwealth Games on Wednesday night, not as Pentagram, but as Prince Diana.

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The inspiration for the act was the infamous comment made by the CWG organising committee chief Suresh Kalmadi, who had accidentally thanked Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, instead of Princess Camilla, in his CWG address.

“We all played characters on stage. I was Prince Di, of course. Papal was Prince Charles, Chiraz was Prince Phillip and Randolph was Queen Elizabeth,” Dadlani smirks.

For Dadlani, who in the past has stood up against student reservations and had an online petition against building the Shivaji statue in the city, this was an opportunity hard to miss.

“The decision to call ourselves Prince Diana was taken in the spur of the moment. The compere didn’t know who we were, so I asked her to introduce us like that,” says Dadlani, adding, “It was a shock to our sound manager, while all of us chuckled on stage.

The crowd was in splits and by the end of the gig everyone was chanting Prince Di. We even did a live jam of Gurdas Mann’s ‘

Gud nalo ishq mitha…

’ in Hinglish (Hindi - English). The gig and the laughs backstage will make it to Penta TV (Pentagram’s Internet video channel) soon,” says Dadlani.