/> Sunday 10 March was an evening to remember. But then again, it just might be an experience that auteur actor Rahul Bose would like to forget.

With an amused shudder Rahul recalls the evening. "It was the first and hopefully last occasion when I've gone truly and really over-board. It was the Rugger Revue. And it takes place every two years. It's a fund-raising event for us rugby players done on a very large scale at the Bombay Gymkhana.

All of us have to performs skits, gags, tell jokes...whatever. I was the only professional actor among us rugby players. And I had no ethical issues about hamming it up to the hilt."

Among the roles that Rahul played yesterday evening was that of a female news-reader, an infant child, an over-the-top lecherous Bengali and an over-the-top caricatural Tamilan.

"I think saying my performances were over-the-top is putting it very mildly. The one word that you've to leave at the door when you walk in for the Rugger Revue is subtlety.

There were basically a lot of Gymkhana members getting together to raise money by going on stage at the risk of making fools of themselves."

Was it hard for Rahul to be unsubtle? "Not too many people know this. But when I came to Mumbai in 1989 my very first performance was on stage. It was a play called Topsyturvy. And I played six different roles there, and every role was over-the-top."

Proudly Rahul is the only actor in the world who plays rugby on a national level. "To be on the national rugby team and act? I'd definitely one of my kind," says Rahul currently preparing for his toughest role ever in Aparna Sen's The Japanese Wife.