Having obliged a member of the audience with the breathless, slightly nasal impersonation of Benazir Bhutto ("Pinky to me, Benazir to you all!") that made her a cult parlour figure in the early '90s, she declares: "Jaani, I'm here to have a blast! But don't report me to your agencies, I don't want to be deported and manhandled," adding, after a delicate pause, "Though maybe I wouldn't mind being manhandled!"
The oldest of an army colonel's three sons, Ali had always loved masquerading in his mother's clothes and make-up.

"I'm a born exhibitionist, darling," he says. "Ever since I was very young, I'd wear my mother's make-up and exquisite dupattas, and become the Rani of Jhansi or Noor Jehan. My younger brother, poor thing, he always got the animal roles!" This eventually led to his parents frogmarching him to a psychologist when he was 14, not the happiest of memories. Now, though, they are proud of his success, and Saleem, for his part, is perfectly comfortable declaring himself bisexual in a country where a gay couple can be imprisoned.

"Darling, I'm a try-sexual!" he says, batting his false lashes. "I've been sexually active since I was 13, and I've tried all sorts of things!" Now, however, he's seeing a girl, who he intends to marry eventually.
Saleem groomed his natural histrionic gift during several years with the popular theatre group Gripps. In this time, his Benazir impersonation got repeated outings, always to thunderous applause. That led to the idea of Begum, a character born in early 2004 during a chat between Saleem and his two best friends; christened after one of their neighbours, a colonel's wife. Saleem pitched the idea to a television channel which snapped it up immediately.

Late Night with Begum Nawazish Ali was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. Its compulsively watchable cocktail of politics and snappy double entendre-laced repartee instantly catapulted Saleem's alter ego to fame. "Even when I had a six-day stubble, and was walking around in an old pair of jeans and T-shirt on the street," says Saleem, "people would come up to me and say, 'Oh, Begum Sahiba, we love your show!'" But each time Ali Saleem becomes Begum Sahiba, the transformation takes a gruelling three hours with a hair and make-up team. The changes are not purely cosmetic, either.

"Ali Saleem was a coffin within which the Begum was buried," says Saleem. "When she was born, Ali Saleem was liberated."

Styled after yesteryear Bollywood star Mumtaz, the Begum sported elaborate coiffures, lushly coloured saris and increasingly naughty blouses--which Pakistani women widely began to copy.

What made even more compelling viewing than the Begum's selection of backless cholis, though, was the steady stream of celebrities she welcomed to her boudoir: simpering starlets, leggy models, dour-faced politicians, hit musicians, and even activists such as Mukhtaran Mai, the rape victim-turned-human rights activist. From India, John Abraham, Ajay Devgan and Nandita Das were among the celebs to have graced the Begum's velvet couch.

Sometimes, celebs were brought on to the show in the unlikeliest of pairings: a model with a member of Pakistan's oldest religious party, for instance. "That's definitely my favourite episode," reminisces the Begum, taking a thoughtful puff of the cigarette held between perfectly manicured, polished nails. "I had Naimatullah Khan of Jamaat-e-Islami and ultra-hot model Tooba Siddiqui together on the show. She was wearing a skimpy Rohit Bal creation, and he was against female models on billboards!"

Though she describes what ensued as "such chemistry", fireworks would be a more apt description. That's certainly true of the episode in which Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, the federal minister for railways, stormed off the show. Why? "Oh, I don't know!" says the Begum, with breezy insouciance. "He's not married, and there are all kinds of rumours about him! So I just suggested we do a special number in his minister bogey."

What got the talk show pulled off air after its 84th show in July this year, though, was not controversy, but dissent. Pervez Musharraf's deregulation of the airwaves in 2004 might have helped the show take shape, but this tolerance ran out when Aitzaz Ahsan, suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry's defence lawyer, made an appearance on the show. Just then, the rules of Pakistan's regulatory body for electronic media PEMRA were made more stringent.

The show polarised opinions in drawing rooms everywhere. "People either love the Begum or hate her," says Saleem. Being on Begum's side meant you stood for democracy, open-mindedness, free speech, the PPP. Being against her meant you were conservative, Islamist and pro-dictatorship. Lines were swiftly drawn on the Internet too. Detractors expressed relief that the "disgusting rays of vulgarity" were no longer beamed on to their screens. Others defended the show's progressiveness, and condemned Musharraf for muzzling the media. Nevertheless, the show has made it back on air earlier this month. On an episode to air later this week, the Begum promises to "nurse all the wounds" of Nawaz Sharif, who's just made it back to the country after a seven-year-long exile.

It's the end of a long, hectic day of tackling back-to-back interviews and live TV appearances, all the while in costume. Whistling the tune "Dude looks like a lady", Saleem walks back to his hotel room for a brief rest before catching a flight back to Mumbai, and further on, to Karachi. Collapsing on to a seat with a sigh of relief, he says, "God, I can't wait to get out of this sari and be normal again!"