BBC Online explaining Amitabh Bachchan's position in the top slot said: ``Many people in the Western world will not have heard of Amitabh Bachchan, but he remains one of Bollywood's biggest stars, having appeared in more than 100 films in three decades. He made his name in the seventies and eighties as an action hero, a swashbuckling star of Hindi films.''

Given the world's obsession with lists, BBC Online, the BBC's Internet based news channel, has been running a monthly poll to pick the ``greatest'' figures, from writers to politicians, of thismillennium. The polls have, with a few notable exceptions, been pretty predictable. The only other Indian to make the number one mark, apart from Amitabh Bachchan, is Mahatma Gandhi. He topped the poll for the ``world's greatest leaders'', beating Elizabeth I, Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela.

Online users have also voted Johannes Gutenberg, the top inventor, Shakespeare the number one writer, Leonardo da Vinci the greatest artist. But predictability came a cropper with Paul McCartney pipping not just Beethovan but also Bach and Mozart, to the position of greatest composer of the millennium.

While scientific opinion polls use controlled population samples, audience polls and especially Internet polls are open season for the determined pollster. While Amitabh Bachchan may be unknown in the West, cinema audiences in South Asia, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East know him well. Crucially, so do enough Internet users who frequent the BBC Online site.

The BBC has had previous experience ofdetermined numbers. A few years ago L K Advani (who had recently become an NRI hero courtesy his rath yatra and the destruction of the Babri Masjid) was voted BBC Radio4's person of the year. Radio4, which has a negligible number of Asian listeners, was inundated with hundreds of identical postcards naming Advani as the chosen one, making the entire thing rather farcical. The station even considered discontinuing the annual poll since it was obvious that it could, quite comfortably, be rigged.

But, before the poll result is seen as a conclusive proof of star quality, it may do well to remember that well ahead of Govinda No 10, and not so far below Amitabh No 1, is cartoon character Homer Simpson. Grabbing the fifth place in Online's greatest ``stars of stage and screen'' this television animation phenomenon also beat Robert De Niro and Marilyn Monroe.