It is a profound relief when reading a book by a friend to find, first, that you can finish it and, second, that having finished it you can tell the author – and your thousands of readers, if you happen to be placed as I am – that you like it. I was in this happy situation last year when Simon Astaire published his first novel Private Privilege, based on his less than happy time as a pupil at Harrow School. I am in it once more having just galloped through its sequel, And You Are...? (Quartet, £10), which follows Simon, through his fictional counterpart Samuel Alexander, into the world of showbusiness in London and Hollywood.

This is a world Simon knows well, as anyone who cares to Google his name soon discovers. I Googled him myself and found an article in the Jewish Chronicle (his Jewishness was one of the problems at Harrow) whose opening paragraph says much of what one needs to know about his celebrity lifestyle.

I quote: “You have a string of glamorous girlfriends, from society girl Tara Palmer-Tomkinson to television presenter Ulrika Jonsson. You fly first class between London and Los Angeles every month, and your clients include Oscar-winning actress Rachel Weisz and The Queen’s cousin Lady Gabriella Windsor. You were best man at Sting’s wedding to Trudi Styler . . .”

It is illustrated with a photograph of Simon with his arm draped around his “close friend” Nancy Dell’Ollio who is, I can assure you, rather easier on the eye than the chap he is clasping on the right. (As years pass I am coming to resemble – horrors – the chimp-like Press baron Lord Beaverbrook.) But enough of all this. Gray Matter is widely recognised as a celebrity-free zone. When I met Simon for lunch last week at Cibo! in Summertown, we were not there to drop or catch names but to talk – as we did – about old times.

Conversation naturally led to our mutual friend, the late Michael Mainwaring, one of the co-dedicatees of And You Are ...? As a tutor at an Oxford cramming establishment (which provided the income that his novels and other books didn’t) he had charge of the teenage Simon when he arrived to try to make up for those Harrow days.

Mike is implicated in one of the choicest stories in the book – taken straight from real life. In this Sam (Simon) out on his first big star ‘outing’ looking after Telly Savalas (TV’s Kojak) sees, tries to avoid but is ultimately confronted by a louche buddy of his mate who asks: “Are you going to Billy’s [Mike’s] orgy on Saturday night?” There is then a deafening silence, broken at last by Telly: “Well, Sam, are you?”

Yes, I remember it well (and I don’t mean the orgy). I well remember, too, another tale ‘lifted’ from life for Private Privilege. In this a boozed up Mike (later he was a pillar of Alcoholics Anonymous) bobbed off on a train home from London and, waking to find the train had stopped, asked a fellow passenger whether he had overshot Oxford. She replied: “Young man that’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard. We haven’t even left Paddington yet.”

Perhaps I shall one day see the episode acted out on screen, for plans are well advanced for turning Private Privilege into a film. But who will play Simon?