Tasha Dhanraj on her sister’s budding stardom

About six months ago, my aspiring actress sister landed her first role in a TV series. She then spent three months in Liverpool filming, during which time I revelled in having a bathroom all to myself – it was the most exciting thing that had happened to me all year!

I know that my sister getting a proper acting job should be more exciting, but she is so fussy about how I fold the towels that her absence gave me a freedom I have never experienced before.

The series itself is something I might admit to having watched about eight years ago, but these days I am far too mature to ever say out loud that I enjoy it. It is aimed at American ‘tweens’ – the same market Twilight hunts after.

My sister describes it as ‘a soap opera, comedy, mystery’, which I think we can all agree sounds positively super duper. She plays one of eight main characters – and yes, ‘one of eight main characters’ is a mild oxymoron.

“Yes, ‘one of eight main characters’ is a mild oxymoron”

Despite my cynicism, it looks like it could actually be a hit. So far, all that has been released is the trailer and already the internet has exploded with creepy, stalker fan sites and videos on YouTube featuring a slide show of her against dodgy music.

Because the show is an English-speaking version of a German show, most of her fans are German. When it began, it was all terribly amusing. Her admirers had hunted through every inch of the internet finding her abandoned Bebo and MySpace pages as well as rooting out public Facebook photos and information to adorn the pages of their websites.

It was so delightfully disturbing that I couldn’t help but laugh as she went through the photoshopped images of herself – one hand on the mouse and the other over her eyes. She was terrified; it was hilarious.

That was until about three days ago when one of the German websites added another page. “Ihre Schwester”. The page consists of a title: “Tasha Dhanraj” and two photos of me. Suddenly, it stopped being funny.

These people had somehow gained access to every photograph of me on the internet and out of all of them had chosen the two most hideous photos to use. I honestly don’t care about the stalking – if anything I love the attention – but I just wish they could have chosen a couple of prettier pictures…