Coming from a traditional Sikh family, Punam Verma was supposed to follow her siblings into a sensible career, becoming a doctor or pharmacist. Instead, a chance e-mail sent to her by mistake set her on a rather different path. Had she not spotted the junk mail advertising a presenter's job with Dubai One, she might still be in Britain dreaming of that big break.
Now, as host of the lifestyle programme Out And About, she is more likely to be seen jumping out of a helicopter, wakeboarding, driving a Formula One car or cosying up to George Clooney or Kylie Minogue on the red carpet. "I have the best job in the world," she says, beaming. But the question remains, do her parents approve? "I actually wanted to be a singer and songwriter - I still do - and they definitely thought that was not a proper job," she says, laughing.
"To them, being on TV is a proper job compared to singing on stage. My sister is a pharmacist and my brother an optician, while everyone else around us was a doctor, all considered sensible career options in the British Asian community where I grew up. "But my parents trusted us enough to follow our hearts. They love what I do and are really proud of me. They collect all the magazines I am in and watch the show online each week in the UK."
The seeds of a career in entertainment were sown when Verma was a teenager. Her father, Hakam, comes from Lahore, in Pakistan, and moved to the Punjab region of India after Partition, while her mother was born in Ludhiana in the Punjab. The couple were part of the wave of Asian families who moved to Britain in the 1960s to secure a better future for their children. Verma was born in London but within a year the family had resettled in Walsall, an industrial town in the West Midlands, where her father still runs a property company and her mother, Prakash, worked as a teacher.
While her home life centred around the Sikh Punjabi community, Verma's cultural influences were distinctly western. At 13, she was given the Prince album Purple Rain, regarded by many in the music industry as one of the best albums ever, and it left the germ of an idea which persists to this day. "It completely changed my life," says Verma. "I had always been quite creative and wanted to do something with music. I was constantly writing poetry, and that album helped me start putting music and melodies to my words. I have been obsessed for years with music."
After graduating with a marketing degree from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, she was determined to pursue a music career but that notion was soon nipped in the bud. "Everyone was saying: 'When are you going to get a proper job?'" she says in a faint Birmingham twang, which becomes stronger when she mimics those from home. She applied for various marketing posts in radio stations and landed a job in the promotions department of the Birmingham-based radion station BRMB.
"While I was doing that, the station had a singing competition. I got randomly chosen for the final five, even though I was not a trained singer. "I had to perform on stage in front of 30,000 people on New Year's Eve in Birmingham's Centenary Square and absolutely loved it. From then, I had more confidence to produce music." Singing remained a hobby, however, so she applied to Trafficlink, a company providing round-the-clock weather reports for radio stations, for a marketing post.
When they spotted her passion for music on her CV, they asked if she would present instead. "They thought I would have a decent voice for radio," she says. "Three weeks later, I was presenting traffic and travel news for 20 different radio stations around the UK." After five years, she was approached by the BBC to co-present its West Midlands breakfast show. "We would talk about anything and everything," she says in a burst of giggles - she laughs often. "I really enjoyed it."
After two years, Verma decided she needed more heavyweight skills to consolidate her career and returned to university to study for a postgraduate diploma in broadcast journalism. Afterwards, she went back to her BBC post to continue presenting news and entertainment on the breakfast show when, eight months later, a fluke e-mail popped up on her computer. "My friend sent me an e-mail that went straight to my junk box. I was going to delete it but decided to have a look instead. At the bottom of the e-mail was a message from her colleague in Dubai. He had accidentally attached a small ad saying Dubai TV was looking for presenters.
"The job was only advertised in Dubai so I would never have come across it if it were not for that e-mail." Verma set to work putting together a two-minute showreel with various skits from her job, from jumping out of a window to interviewing celebrities, and e-mailed it to the producers in June 2007. Four days later, after a brief telephone conversation, she was offered her own show. "I had an e-mail saying I was going to present my own TV show," she says. "You know when you read something and you think it is a joke? I did not believe it at first.
"They had never met me and I had never met them, so it was a real leap of faith for us both. But two weeks later, I had packed my bags, quit the BBC and was on a plane to Dubai." While Verma was incredulous about her good fortune, it is not difficult to see why she stood out from the 40 candidates for Out and About. Bubbly and effervescent, she constantly sends herself up and laughs often and loudly. Despite her newfound star status, she has no airs and graces and kicks off her shoes to curl up on a sofa when we meet at a coffeeshop in The Greens.
A pretty brunette in her late 30s - she is coy about revealing her exact age - she admits she is not the typical starry-eyed young presenter one might expect for a show based in a city where the average age is, according to World Health Organisation figures, 30. "My producer told me after I was hired that she wanted someone in their 30s who had something to say for themselves," says Verma. "My showreel stood out because they needed a bit of a daredevil. I have never seen an age barrier in the TV industry here. You are just judged on the quality of your presenting and I love entertainment journalism."
Her devil-may-care attitude has been called upon more than once while filming Out and About, which is now in its fourth series and broadcasts across the Middle East. She has had to perform a number of stunts, from sailing a catamaran and being left dangling from a rope when it keeled at a 90 degree angle, to extreme sports such as water skiing and wakeboarding. While she rarely refuses activities, there is just one she will never do again - riding a horse, only to fly off and hit a fence when it began galloping.
"I have done a lot of scary things," she says. "It is extremely tough and you think things are going to be easy until you try them. One of the hardest things I did was Boot Camp at 6am. The whole group had to do press-ups that seemed to go on for about an hour. "I still love it, though, and am very lucky because with this job. I have seen everything in Dubai. The only problem is when you experience things for work you never really relax.
"I have been on the fastest speedboat, driven one of the fastest F1 cars and been wakeboarding, things I would never have tried before. "I don't think these opportunities would have presented themselves if I stayed in the UK. I think I have the best job in the world. I feel like I am boasting but that is the reality: I had dreams for myself but reality has surpassed them." Filming for up to 10 hours a day, six days a week, has been tough, she admits. Verma has long been the golden girl of the free-to-air channel Dubai One and for a while, it seemed she was never off our screens.
It was Verma presenting from the red carpet at the Dubai International Film Festival last year and appearing in trailers for the event, providing the links between programmes on the channel or popping up on screen with the slogan: "Punam Verma - she's all over Dubai". These days she has competition with a rash of new faces and a host of original programmes springing up on Dubai One, each with an attractive anchorwoman, from Twenty Something's Annah Jacob to Dareen Abughaida of the news-based show Dubai Tonight and Lubna Habib of City Wrap, a recap of the week's most significant events.
Couple that with the fact a co-host was introduced to her show, the British-born former male model Layne Redman, does she feel threatened by the new kids on the block? "I do not feel any sense of competition because each of the shows uses stories from different angles and we rarely see the other presenters - we are wrapped up in our own world and just get on with it," says Verma. "When Layne first came on the show last year, it was hard to have someone taking over half the presenting because it had been my baby and I helped write the scripts and choose the music.
"But we have a very similar sense of humour and are like brother and sister on set. He is very easygoing and it helps not having to film six days a week - plus I try to get him to do the scary stuff, although he is more terrified than I am. We egg each other on. "I cannot complain as last week I had to eat Magnolia cupcakes, so it has definitely taken the pressure off with the challenges. I am still enjoying making the show because nothing lasts forever."
A highlight of her career was meeting George Clooney at the 2007 Dubai film festival - "every woman was mesmerised by him" - and her goal is to meet the chat show host Oprah Winfrey: "That would be mind-blowing. She is in another league." She has yet to meet her match in a relationship but Verma, who is single, says she is a big believer in destiny: "Of course my family have been wanting me to marry for the past 10 years but you do not feel the pressure here because you are away from the whole family circle.
"I do not like to plan too much. If it happens, it happens. I never planned to come to Dubai and look, it has been the best thing I have ever done." Meanwhile, there are "new and wonderful" things happening with her singing career, which she has been quietly pursuing in a mini studio in her Dubai home and with weekly singing lessons. Verma is in talks with record producers and hopes to release an album soon.
As for her TV career, it has gone from being something of an anomaly to a family affair. "My sister Maggie lives here in Dubai. Both she and her seven-year-old son Yuvraj are regulars on the show and tend to join me on shoots as extras," says Verma. "My friends and family are really happy and proud of me but then, without their support, I would not have got this far. They have all played a part in my success.
"I do not feel I have made it, though. I have achieved one incredible ambition in my life by having a TV show but I still have many more dreams to pursue. "It goes to show, if you have a passion and believe in yourself, you can make anything happen."