JASS PATEL doesn’t care for Bollywood films. Unlike many other British Asian men, who are only too eager to demonstrate their pelvic prowess on the dancefloor, he has no time for bhangra. The bohemian-looking bartender and part-time pianist, who likes a drink and a cigarette, prefers to hang out with his newly formed rhythm and blues band. One day, he hopes to have both a record deal and his own bar.

He doesn’t have Asian friends and dates white women. He thoroughly disapproves of arranged marriages. But now he’s hit 30 and he wants to settle down — with an Asian woman. “I think it comes down to something this simple: because I’ve never been out with an Asian girl, I need to know if there is someone out there for me in my own culture,” he explains.

“In the past, I’ve been really stubborn, and put my foot down hard about not going out with Asian girls. I equated them with arranged marriages. It’s only in the last few months I’ve thought that maybe I’m shooting myself in the foot.” If he doesn’t try it, he says, he’ll never know what it’s like.

Jass, 30, is featured in I Won’t Marry White, a Channel 4 documentary following the romantic fortunes of three British Asian singletons who, having led resolutely westernised lives, have undergone sudden changes of heart and decided that they would prefer to settle down with their own kind. They are not rebelling against parental pressure; Jass’s parents would have been quite content for him to take a non-Asian wife. Another participant, Lena Shah, 27, is not even sure whether she will be attracted to Asian men.

The reasons for their decisions vary — Jass is daunted by the idea of having to explain foreign rituals and customs to an outsider. Others cite more controversial motives, including not wishing to dilute the Asian gene pool with white genes, a reason that Jass dismisses as “b***ocks”. We agree that this is racist. “Having mixed-race children would never be an issue for me,” he says.

It is easy to see why people like Jass have been called “reverse coconuts”: white on the outside and brown on the inside. He is dressed in jeans and a poloneck. He sounds like a Londoner (he’s from Hertfordshire). The only thing you wouldn’t guess from his appearance is that he is a practising Hindu. Well, sort of. He fasts, prays and celebrates Diwali but admits to eating beef.

I have arranged to meet Jass to try to understand why he has felt the compulsion to make such a radical decision, a decision that was so different from my own. I was brought up in neighbouring Essex, and both Jass and I were used to being the only Asians in our school year. Both of us had mainly white friends, although one of my best friends was another British-born Indian. She went on to marry another British Indian, while I, after dating both white and Asian men, married a white man. Not that I had time to think about Tom’s colour — he smiled and I fell in love. Sure, we are in a mixed marriage but we don’t recognise ourselves in that phrase. It suggests conflict and compromise. The truth is, our different ethnicities have never registered as an issue.

In 14 years together, we have had just one nasty comment from a passer-by. The issue cropped up briefly when we had our daughter, and we wondered what she would look like (she was born paler than Tom and now, two years later, is nearly as brown as me).

So when I heard about the documentary, I was intrigued. Not because Jass and the others were opting for Asian partners but because it seemed they were rejecting white ones outright. How, Jass, can you reject the people you have grown up with? And surely you can’t help who you fall in love with? “I’ve always said I’d marry whoever I fall in love with, whether she’s white or Asian, but I think it comes down to the fact that I am religious and the Asian culture is a big part of who I am, in terms of family, Diwali, going to temples and that kind of stuff,” says Jass, whose parents came separately to Britain from East Africa in the late Sixties and had an arranged marriage over here.

“Someone who’s not used to that might not understand it or get used to it. They might not want to understand it. They might say to me, ‘I married you, not your family’. But that’s what Asian marriages tend to be like — you marry the whole family. Everyone gets to know your business.”

The reason he hasn’t gone out with Asian women before, Jass says, is lack of access. In fact, he admits to having had a stereotyped view of them that borders on the hilarious.

“I thought a typical Asian female was probably a good Indan girl, did as she was told, and was pushed into a career that she was told was good for her. I thought she maybe didn’t have much choice in what was going on in her life.

“My conception was completely wrong. They are just normal girls. Doing this programme, I went to bars that were full of just Asian people. I’ve never been in a situation like that and it was shocking for me. I was so far removed from them that I didn’t realise that Asian people partied like everyone else.”

He also admits to shunning the Asian social circuit because his educational background would be perceived as inferior: he has four A-levels but has not been to university.

As Jass explains it to me, he sounds like a traveller discovering a lost tribe. The poignant thing is, it is the one to which he belongs. But, for me, ethnicity is just one of many ties that bind, and other ties seemed stronger. Unlike many British Asians, I have had a wholly secular upbringing. My parents met in this country and married for love. I probably had more in common with my white friends.

Jass fell in love with a white girl, Becky, whom he dated for three years in his early twenties, and she is now his best friend. “She came to weddings and she fitted in really well,” he says. So what does she think of his new strategy for finding love? “Probably misguided,” he laughs. “She thinks I’m far too westernised.”

I Won’t Marry White, Channel 4, Monday Nov 22, 11pm.

MIXED MARRIAGES

Asian parents are more likely to view intermarriage as a cultural betrayal than white parents.