Shah Rukh Khan

Host: Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me enormous pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Shah Rukh Khan. Shah Rukh Khan: Thank you very much. First of all, it's an honor for me to receive this doctorate today.

So thank you everyone who's involved with this. And humbled is a word often used by people in my profession. You know, you meet actors, they go, "I'm very humbled.

I'm very humbled." We all are. I dislike the hypocritical obsequious connotation of it in these contexts, so I'm not going to use it, but I will say that such occasions have a way of putting me right in my place, which is right there, so thank you everyone, for putting me in my place.

I do get invited to conferences and inaugurations now and then to speak, and when I receive the invite, I also receive my brief. It's usually about success and my tips on it. Not my toes. Those are covered by I will never show my toes clause in my contracts.

They're very ugly. And it's my attempt at gender equality. My co-actresses have no cleavage clause. I have no toes clause.

Now, most people believe Bollywood stars aren't insightful about anything other than the fateful occurrences which made them stars in the first place. But I've had the odd divergence from being taken for stupid, though. Recently, I got an email from an international association of advertising and they said, "Dear Mr. Khan, the advertising community would like you to come and address them on globalization and disruptive marketing."

And I spent the next four hours on Google trying to assimilate the disruptiveness of innovating a product to match its market. But it was one of those rare days when even Google can't help you.

A day when you need to leave Google and ask for deliverance from God. But I have a film releasing soon, so I don't want to, take extra favors from God before the film releases. So I chose business over knowledge.

I did the next best thing. I sat on my IO Hawk. Have you guys seen that Segway thing?

Yeah. Yeah. So I went on my IO Hawk and told everybody, a gathering like yours, that there is nothing I can tell you that you already don't know. And people, when they're told they're smart, they like it. You're such an august gathering of people, and blah.

Instead, let me entertain you because you all deserve a break. And before the organizers could interject, I started thrusting my pelvic into their faces. And broke out into the one and only intellectual thing I know how to do, the lungi dance.

So I got away with it without being humbled. It always pays to be a better dancer than your advertisers, and what's more, they seemed to have a good time. But that was a conference, and this is a doctorate from a prestigious University of Edinburgh, so I'm going to try to sound intelligent and insightful, especially for you today.

One of the subjects on the list of five I was sent for my speech today was life lessons. So for whatever it is worth, here goes. Let me start at the very beginning.