Sir Salman Rushdie Furious at Bodyguard's Tell All Memoir

Posted on August 2, 2008

So when did Sir Salman Rushdie cross the line into tabloid fixture rather than literary figure? When the fatwa calling for his death was issued? When he married, then got a divorce from Padma Lakshmi? When he was knighted? When his romantic exploits were avidly chronicled? Well, Sir Salman has just endured another celebrity rite of passage: a former bodyguard - Ron Evans - is writing a tell-all book about him. And Sir Salman isn't happy about it. He is threatening to sue.

In the book, he claims Sir Salman was nicknamed "Scruffy" and was once locked in a cupboard because he irritated his protection officers. They then all went to the pub.

He wrote: "When they were suitably refreshed they came back and let him out."

He also claims the author charged officers around £40 a night to stay in his home and would also ask for money if they drank his wine. In the memoirs, Mr Evans writes: "We were paying, or rather, the taxpayer was paying Rushdie to protect him!"

Sir Salman replied: "He's made up a whole bunch of lies. I became extremely friendly and fond of the police officers who protected me. They were extremely scrupulous and would never behave so cruelly to me, get drunk on duty or do anything else he has said. At the end of my nine years of protection, they even held a party for me. He has not checked his facts. I was never locked in a cupboard nor was I suicidal. None of these things happened."

The bodyguards called him Scruffy and locked him in a closet? How incredibly odd. We need more details. Surely this can't be all the dirt he has to dish?

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