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‘Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins’ by Rupert Everett

(Little, Brown, $37)What a very juicy book about a very naughty boy! I wouldn’t recommend it to my mum’s mah jong crowd, that’s for sure, so if you’re squeamish about what the fast crowd might have been up to in the past three decades, look elsewhere, because if there’s one thing Rupert Everett is, it’s fast.

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You may not instantly recognise this very English “eligible bachelor” because he has hovered on the fringe of acting fame rather than twinkled at the top. But he’s very good looking and has quite the acid tongue, which has clearly made him a darling of the in-crowd.

Thus over the years he has been adopted by A-listers from Andy Warhol to Joan Collins to Madonna. Whether any of them are still talking to him remains to be seen, of course, because what sets this apart from most autobiographies is that Rupert is not shy about dishing the dirt.

Julia Roberts and Madonna both smell sweaty, according to Roo, Bob Geldof is dirty and Sharon Stone is apparently stark raving mad. It’s not just his famous friends that make for such good reading though. Rupert comes from fascinatingly posh stock. He grew up in a house in the country with a nanny and a groom, and went hunting on his bitchy pony, Crisp.

Traumatised by being sent to boarding school at age seven, his good looks and humour got him through that minefield without it being the end of him, and these qualities continue to this day, I suspect, to be largely responsible for getting him into scrapes and back out again without losing a limb.

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I suppose he’s sort of like a modern-day David Niven in that his real life is more interesting than his acting life and he is supremely talented at recalling it. But whereas reviewers of or Niven’s 1971 autobiography The ooon’s A Balloon (which I loved) suggested that book left you dying to meet the author, I think I would run a mile if Rupert turned up on my doorstep.

A must for anyone who cares about – but can’t be shocked by – what the rich and fabulous do in their spare time (and work time, for that matter). The shockable should stick to David Niven.

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