Salman Rushdie no longer fears for his life. “I don’t know what the Iranians think of me,” he mused, in a talk in Oporto, Portugal, last week. “Except for the fact that at one point they wanted to kill me and now they don’t seem as interested.”

Rushdie spent a decade in hiding after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa against him in 1989. Khomeini died soon afterwards. The book was banned in 11 countries and riots erupted worldwide. One translator was murdered. In 1998, the Iranian Government announced that it would no longer support the fatwa, but could not rescind it.

“I don’t see what happened as a publicity tool for my books,” continued Rushdie. “If anyone doubts that, I would encourage them personally to experience what I lived through.”

• The legal establishment’s continued reluctance to send Pete Doherty to jail leaves his record company with a considerable problem: where to send him instead.

  The Babyshambles singer was evicted from his East London flat earlier this year. People hears that attempts were recently made to house him in an £800pw penthouse flat in Tower Hill through agents Atkinson McLeod, but the landlord pulled out of the deal when the identity of his prospective tenant was disclosed. Even the offer of 12 months’ rent up front couldn’t change his mind.
  

• Like many a top celebrity hangout, the Wolseley in London has a strict no-cameras policy among diners. Last week, we’re told, a visiting family were recording a daughter’s 21st with a disposable camera when an elderly gent let fly with a bread roll. An ill-tempered altercation followed. “Why don’t you throw him out?” wailed the outraged father. The waiter was succinct: “Because he is Lucian Freud.”
  
  
• Difficult times (we learn from those who know) for the England rugby team. Equally difficult times (as above) for the Bath rugby team. Thankfully, Matt Stevens — a prop for both — has other interests, as seen this summer on Celebrity X Factor. Next week, Stevens has a solo slot in a Bath carol service, organised by the local rotary club. Perhaps fittingly, he will be singing In the Bleak Midwinter.
  
  
• The Liberal Democrats have found a new candidate for Winchester, following Mark Oaten’s decision to leave Parliament at the next election. Martin Tod, 42, is a marketing consultant and has excellent local credentials — his ancestor, Thomas Garnier, one-time Dean of Winchester, is honoured in a local museum, thanks to his 1860 campaign for a sewerage system. Locals consider him a worthy candidate to fill Oaten’s seat.
  
  Postscript
  
  

• “I have been to war zones and covered all kinds of terrible stories,” said Krishnan Guru-Murthy in a talk to school-leaving students at the London Excel Centre. “But I have to say, since I became a father, I have completely changed. I get very moved by things. I don’t think it would be such a good thing for me to start blubbing away on the Channel 4 News, so I pull myself together.”

• Forgive the parochialism, but we felt it worth a mention that the Waterloo and City line was closed yesterday owing to “dust on the platform”. The wrong kind of dust, evidently.

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