YESTERDAY the Big Brother house, tomorrow the world — or at least Westminster Abbey packed with representatives of more than 50 nations. That is the prospect for Shilpa Shetty, the Bollywood actress barely known in Britain until she won Celebrity Big Brother in January.

She is to address the Queen, political leaders and other dignitaries at the abbey during the Commonwealth Day Observance. She will give a “personal testimony” at the annual event, in which she will talk about her experience of coping with ethnic differences.

It caps a meteoric rise for Shetty that is matched only by the plummet from favour of Jade Goody, the Big Brother contestant who vilified and racially abused her on screen.

Although Shetty used to be better known for her sensual dancing than her political theorising, she now finds herself a sought-after ambassador for courtesy and tolerance. As well as the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, she will have in her audience Tony Blair, David Cameron and Sir Menzies Campbell.

In her speech Shetty will talk about her childhood in Bombay and her awareness of the vastness of India with its “incredible diversity”.

She will say: “In India, in the UK and the world over, we are constantly reminded that we have to cope with difference on a daily basis. It is sometimes hard, but unless we do we have no future.”

Party leaders, particularly Cameron, may reflect on the wisdom of her words: last week Cameron’s spokesman on security, Patrick Mercer, found he had no front-bench future after making injudicious remarks about racism in the army.

A prerecorded message by the Queen will be broadcast to the congregation and all over the Commonwealth. She will say: “In today’s difficult and sometimes divided world I believe it is more important than ever to keep trying to respect and understand each other better. Each of us is an individual with ties of emotion and bonds of obligation to culture, religion, community, country and beyond. In short, each of us is special.”

The Queen will call on the Commonwealth to “find our diversity a cause for celebration and a source of strength and unity”.

That is not quite how Goody saw matters when she encountered Shetty in the Celebrity Big Brother house. Goody referred to Shetty as “Shilpa Poppadom” and “F***awallah”, and declared during the show that Shetty “makes me feel sick, she makes my skin crawl”.

Since emerging from the house, Goody has been doing a lot more crawling in a desperate attempt to rescue her reputation.

However, a visit to India to mend fences ended badly. She will not be at the abbey tomorrow.

Shetty, by contrast, was invited to the House of Commons by the MP Keith Vaz and met Tony Blair and other cabinet ministers.

In addition to Shetty, several other individuals will give personal accounts at the Commonwealth ceremony, which is said to be one of the Queen’s favourite events. Among them will be Ben Okafor, whose early life was shaped by his experience as a boy soldier during Nigeria’s civil war in the 1960s, and Anne Gallagher, a nurse from Victoria hospital, Belfast, who has tended bomb victims from both sides of Northern Ireland’s conflict. Additional reporting: Sam Airey

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