It's not often that Salman Khan gate-crashes an event but on Sunday he did just that and even went up on stage to admit that he had not been invited to the first look launch of the upcoming Tamil-Hindi-Telugu sci-fi trilingual, 2.0, but had shown up because he wanted to meet Rajinikanth.

Referring to Rajini as “garu“, Telugu for sir, Sallu recalled how he had bumped into the superstar in the washroom of an event and had been bemused to see him playing with his cigarettes until he realised that he was simply perfecting his trademark gesture. He then went on to ask Karan Johar, tongue firmly in cheek why he didn't make films like Shankar.

The Thalaiva made his trip worth the effort by saying that if Salman gave his nod, he'd do a film with him tomorrow. Karan then went on to pin Chitti (Rajini's character's name) to a rapid fire Q-and-A session during which he was asked who was the King of Bollywood. The answer was a prompt “Mr Amitabh Bachchan.“ The query about the Queen of Bollywood brought forth a number of names from Madhuri Dixit and Sridevi to Deepika Padukone, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra, Anushka Sharma and ended with Rakhi Sawant. Those who know him well swear by the demi-God's wit which was on show when he was asked to desribe his co-star and the film's antagonist, Akshay Kumar. “Twinkle Twinkle little star,“ he quipped, sparking off a gale of mirth in the assembled audience. Akshay retorted by calling him a 'galaxy' rather than a “superstar“.

The film, a sequel to the 2010 Hindi-Tamil Robot Enthiran will hit screens in Diwali 2017 and also features Amy Jackson, Sudhanshu Pandey and Adil Hussain. But it was the Khiladi Kumar's look that was the 'talk' of the evening.

The makers revealed that every day he had to wake up six hours early for make-up. Salman praised Akki because he has constantly grown and experimented with different roles. While Rajinikanth returns as scientist Vaseegaran, Akshay is reported to be playing an eccentric scientist called Richard aka the Crow Man, the result of an experiment gone wrong.