A naive beguilement rather than sly irony frames Rushdie’s accounts of hanging out with such very famous people as Jerry Seinfeld and Calista Flockhart. Madonna, narrowly missed at Tina Brown’s immortal launch party for Talk magazine, is finally encountered at Vanity Fair’s Oscars bash in the company of Zadie Smith. At lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Warren Beatty confesses that Padma Lakshmi, Rushdie’s fourth wife, is so beautiful that it makes him “want to faint”. And William Styron’s genitalia are unexpectedly on display one convivial evening at Martha’s Vineyard.