Salman Rushdie on his "relationship" with Amiee Mullins

Here is an except from a scottish newspaper on the whole Salman Rushdie and Aimee Mullens "relationship"

The media were, from start to finish, fairly sniffy about the May-to-December nature of his relationship with Lakshmi, who is over 20 years his junior. In the days before this interview it has been reported widely that Rushdie is now seeing Aimee Mullins, the young American athlete and model.

"The papers!" he spits when I ask about this. "It's just tabloid shit. Only a couple of months ago I was in love with Carrie Fisher apparently. Before that I was having an affair with a Bollywood actress. Aimee is a dear friend of mine, and so is her boyfriend. The Daily Mail sent journalists to doorstep her boyfriend's mother and offered her money to talk about the fact that Aimee and I were, apparently, going to get married. I constantly find myself having to apologise to women and telling them that this is the downside of being my friend."

Quite an impressive Bio of Aimee Mullins

Aimee Mullins' legs were amputated at the age of one, but with the help of the most advanced artificial legs, she has set world records in running the 100-meter, 200-meter dash and the long jump at the Paralympics. Off the field, Mullins is working on a successful modeling and film career. People magazine named her one of the "50 Most Beautiful People."

Aimee Mullins defies conventional description, both on and off the track. As an athlete, she holds world records in the 100-meter and 200-meter dash and long jump. Off the track, she was one of three nationally chosen high school students to receive full scholarships awarded by the U.S. Department Defense due to academic performance and interviews. In May 1998, she graduated from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, a dean's list major in history and diplomacy. She is a model, actress and speaker, making personal appearances around the country and giving talks to companies, charities and schools. The fact that she is bilateral below-the knee amputee, born without fibula bones in both shins, has not hindered her success in any way.

In August of 1995, Mullins decided she wanted to run track and field for Georgetown University. She had participated in athletics all her life, from skiing to soccer to softball and had always been able to compete against non-disabled kids. So when she called the university's renowned track and field coach, Frank Gagliano (who has coached 5 Olympians), there was no question as to whether she would become a part of his program. She told Gagliano she wanted to train for the1996 Paralympics in Atlanta. The following spring, she was a member of the Hoya women's track team, competing against able-bodied athletes. Her times were behind the competition, but in her first collegiate meet, Aimee ran the 100 meters in 16.70 seconds. In the ensuing year, her times dropped to 15.77 in the 100 and 34.06 in the 200, both unofficial world records in her class. She is the first disabled member of a Division I track team and competed in the '96 Games. Her latest challenge was the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney, Australia.

Since the Olympics in Atlanta, Mullins' life has changed dramatically. News of her accomplishments and courage spread into the hearts of millions of people. She has been featured in many forms of media, including features in Sports Illustrated for Women, NBC’s Dateline, The Rosie O'Donell Show, Parade, Esquire, Jane and Cosmopolitan. She was selected as one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World." She won the "Disabled Female Athlete of the Year" from USA Track and Field, was 1997's "Women of Distinction" from the National Association of Women in Education, a nominee for ESPN's Arthur Ashe Award for courage to be presented at the ESPY Awards show in 1998. Mullins was named to the Disabled Sports, USA Advisory Council and was nominated by Sen. Max Cleland for a position on the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.

Most recently Aimee has embarked on a new career as an actress. Her 2004/2005 film credits include:

"MARVELOUS" with Michael Shannon (soon to be the seen in William Friedkin's "Bug"), Martha Plimpton, 2005 Tony-winner Amy Ryan, Ewen Bremner ("Trainspotting") and Annabella Sciorra;

"QUID PRO QUO" with Nick Stahl and Vera Farmiga (winner of LA FIlm Critics Award for best actress in "Down to the Bone"); and

"SEPTEMBER," Oliver Stone's film with Nicolas Cage, Maggie Gyllenhal, Maria Bello and Michael Pena.

Her passion for running is equaled only by her drive and determination to make a difference in whatever she pursues. She says, "I want to do projects that challenge people's ideas of beauty and the myth that disabled people are less capable, less interesting. I want to expose people to disability as something that they can't pity or fear or closet, but something that they accept and maybe want to emulate. To me, beauty is when people radiate that they like themselves."

Awards and Accomplishments
2005 – Named president-elect of the Women’s Sports Foundation
2005 – featured in film, “Marvelous,” starring Martha Plimpton, Amy Ryan, Mike Shannon, Ewen Bremner, Annabella Sciorra; “Quid Pro Quo;” and upcoming Oliver Stone film

2005 – featured in film, “Quid Pro Quo,”produced by Mark Cuban, starring Nick Stahl, Vera Farmiga, Kate Burton, James Frain,

2004 -- Named to HBO’s list of “Up and Coming” actors

2003 – Named to Rolling Stone Magazine’s annual “Hot List”

2003 – Lead actress in Agatha Christie’s Poirot drama series (A&E/Granada), starring opposite David Suchet, Toby Stephens

2003 -- Star of acclaimed contemporary artist Matthew Barney’s film entitled “Cremaster 3” presented by the Guggenheim Museum and Palm Pictures

2002 – Featured in the Track and Field Hall of Fame, to be opened in New York City in 2003

2001 – Included in Smithsonian presentation of “Game Face: What Does A Female Athlete Look Like?”

2001 – Named as one of Sports Illustrated’s “Coolest Girls In Sports”

2001 – Named to Board of Trustees, Vice President, for non-profit organization “Just One Break” (JOB), founded by Eleanor Roosevelt, Orin Lehman, Howard Rusk, and Bernard Baruch

2000 – Received honorary PhD, Doctor of Humane Letters, from St. John Fisher College

2000 – Included in permanent exhibit of The Women’s Museum (Dallas, TX) as one of the “Greatest American Women of the 20th Century,” sports division

2000 – Named to Advisory Board for Oxygen-Markle Pulse by Ms. Geraldine Laybourne (CEO, Oxygen Media) and Ms. Zoe Baird (President, Markle Foundation)

2000 – Named one of the “Top 100 Irish-Americans” by Irish-America Magazine (1999, 1998 also)

1999 – Named one of “The 50 Most Beautiful People in the World” by People Magazine

1999 – Contributing writer to Harper’s Bazaar Magazine, US and 12 international editions

1999 – Named one “The Year’s 10 Gutsiest Women” by Jane Magazine

1999 – featured speaker at International Design Conference, Sydney, Australia

1998 – Co-founder, “H.O.P.E.” (Helping Others Perform with Excellence), a non-profit organization to provide means, training, and opportunity for persons with disabilities to compete in sports

1998 – Presented with the Tiffany & Co. “Shining Star” Award for raising social awareness of diversity issues

1998 -- Collaborated on award-winning interactive design project with San Diego Children’s Museum to promote non-traditional thinking

1998 – featured speaker at International Design Conference, Aspen, CO

1998 – invited to speak at “TED” and “TEDMED” conferences (other speakers included Bill Bradley, Oliver Stone, Rev. Billy Graham)

1998 – Special Achievement Award, National Rehabilitation Awareness Foundation

1998 – “ESPY” Finalist, Arthur Ashe Award, ESPN Awards Show

1998 – Featured in Esquire Magazine’s “Women We Love” issue

1997 – “Woman of Distinction” Award Recipient, National Association of Women in Education

1997 – “Disabled Female Athlete of the Year,” USA Track and Field

1997 – “Top 40 Under 40” list, Irish-Echo Magazine

1997 – Finalist for “ARETE” Awards, ESPN

1997 – Named to Disabled Sports, USA Advisory Council

1997 – Nominated to President’s Council on Physical Fitness by U.S. Senator Max Cleland

1996 – Member of Georgetown University Women’s Track team

1996 – First disabled member to compete in NCAA in US History

1996 – Only double-below-the-knee amputee to compete on a Division I track team

1996 – World Record Holder, 100 meters

1996 – World Record Holder, Long Jump

1996 – World Record Holder, 200 meters

1996 – Olympian, competed in Paralympics, Atlanta, GA

1993 – Awarded full academic scholarship from U.S. Department of Defense

Aimee Mullens and Salman Rushdie

Working the room at a Manhattan party, they made a surprising couple. At 32 and 5ft 9in, Aimee Mullins is 28 years younger and at least 2in taller than her companion, the portly author Sir Salman Rushdie.

Nevertheless, guests at the Soho Grand Hotel bash earlier this month were left in little doubt that, following the end of his fourth marriage to the sultry Padma Lakshmi, Rushdie now has a new, even younger, woman in his life.

"Aimee said, 'We're good friends, we are close friends,'" a guest at the party recalls. "They certainly looked like they were on a date. They arrived together, left together and were being touchy-feely.

"Salman would take her arm as they walked around the room and when he was talking to people, she'd wait a step behind him.

"She said they'd been to another movie earlier that day and they'd been drinking together since the afternoon.

"'We"ve been hanging out together for the day. I'm a little drunk,"" she said, "and we're tired.'"

Predictably, some are speculating that it is Aimee's fresh-faced beauty that has caught Rushdie's demanding eye.

But what also may have drawn him to the model is a shared history of courage.

In a forthcoming Channel 4 interview, an advance copy of which has been seen by The Mail on Sunday, Rushdie reveals that he knew fear long before fundamentalist mullahs put a bounty on his head.

His father, he says, was a foul-mouthed alcoholic who terrorised him and his mother until a final, violent showdown.

And far from coming naturally to Aimee, her success, grace and poise are the result of her determination to overcome what might seem an insuperable disability.

The daughter of a working-class Irish immigrant to the US, she was born without any shin bones and her legs had to be amputated below the knee on her first birthday.

For most of her life, she wore cheap, unsightly and clumsy artificial stumps yet she became a champion athlete and long jumper, setting world records at the 1996 Paralympics in the 100 metres, the 200 metres and the long jump.

She has also forged a lucrative career as a model, starring in numerous catwalk shows and appearing on the cover of fashion magazines such as i-D and Dazed And Confused.

People magazine has listed her as one of the world's top 50 beauties and she is hotly sought-after on the speaking circuit, where she commands as much as £12,000 for motivational lectures.

"If I want something, I get it," she says. "That is the way I have always been.

"People let their dreams go. They don't realise their dreams are supposed to be their North Star, charting their life decisions for themselves.

"I don't want to look back when I am 80 and say, 'God, I wish I had spent more time feeling sorry for myself.'"

Born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Aimee was brought up in a small house on a noisy main road by her mother, Bernadette, a hospital worker, and her father, Brendon, a foreman at a ball-bearing plant.

It was a tough life, but she rarely complained, even during the eight years of painful operations following the amputation of her lower legs.

Her first artificial limbs were crude plaster stumps but she insisted on learning to walk unaided and took her first steps by the age of two.

She refused to use crutches, let alone a wheelchair, explaining, "I hated that feeling of being confined."

Incredibly, she became as much a tomboy as her two younger brothers.

"She did all the things other kids do - swimming, climbing, falling out of trees," says her father. "She just tried hard."

At Allentown's Parkland High School, she started to compete in track races against able-bodied pupils.

Her English teacher, Amy Mutis, found out that the lively teenager had prosthetic legs only when she wrote an essay about it.

A few years later, Aimee won a scholarship to Washington's Georgetown University, where she was determined to continue to make a mark as an athlete.

"She called me up one day out of the blue, and said, 'I'm Aimee Mullins, I'm a very good runner, and I want to train with you,'" recalls her former coach, Frank Gagliano.

"She said she wore prosthetics but I didn't know what those were, so it was a shock when she turned up and had false legs below the knee.

"She was always sore, always aching. But boy, could she run."

Gagliano became a mentor to Aimee and propelled her to stardom at the Paralympics in Atlanta in 1996.

But Aimee also has another, more unlikely, inspiration - Heather Mills.

Aimee met the future wife of Sir Paul McCartney by chance just two months before the Paralympics. The relationship changed her life.

Aimee said at the time: "A lot of the things I wanted to do - activism, modelling, giving speeches - Heather was already doing them."

The English specialist who designed Heather's lifelike cosmetic leg made a set of legs for Aimee with silicone "skin" that exactly matched her colouring.

She varnished her toenails for the first time the night after the limbs were fitted.

The next day she and Heather went shopping in London for short skirts and high-heeled shoes - the high-fashion Aimee could never wear before.

She made her modelling debut with Heather in September 1998 at an Alexander McQueen fashion show in London, strutting down the runway in a leather corset.

Later she and Heather partied until the early hours.

It was the beginning of a TV and film career that has included a role in Oliver Stone's movie World Trade Center and invitations to many glamorous events thronging with eligible men.

Until recently, however, Aimee seemed immune to their advances.

"Unlike Heather, Aimee has never been attracted to money," says one friend.

"She doesn't have a manipulative bone in her. She has principles."

In fact, until she appeared with Rushdie at the Manhattan party, friends and family assumed she was still with her long-term boyfriend, Eric Treiber, whom she has dated since high school.

"As far as everyone knows, Aimee is still loyal to Eric," says the friend. "She has never mentioned breaking up with him.

"But now that Salman Rushdie is taking an interest in her, you do have to think she may finally have outgrown her roots.

"Rushdie is a high-risk, high-maintenance guy, but Aimee has taken far bigger risks than this."

The author's high-maintenance lifestyle is well documented.

His marriage to the actress and model Padma Lakshmi came to an end last year after his fourth wife filed for divorce, reportedly tired of his domineering temperament.

Rushdie has not commented publicly on the split but speaking to TV therapist Pamela Stephenson - Billy Connolly's wife - for an episode of Shrink Rap which will be shown next month, he says: "I have just come out of a very painful period, the end of a marriage that I did not want to end."

He also speaks for the first time about his father, Anis, a well-to-do Indian businessman, who Rushdie says was a verbally abusive drunkard and the inspiration for the alcoholic father in his 1981 Booker Prize-winning novel, Midnight's Children.

Rushdie says: "My father was an angry drunk. He would use all kinds of foul language towards whomever was on hand which tended to be my mother.

"[Once] we were sharing a hotel room, in London - before I had to go to boarding school. He would drink a great deal of whisky every night and it would change his personality.

"He would shake me awake in the middle of the night to scream abuse at me.

"There was one moment when I actually hit him. I heard him being abusive to my mother and by that time I was 20 and not interested in taking it.

"My father was smaller than me but very, very physically strong, Popeye the Sailorman forearms, and I remember hitting him and then thinking, 'Oh now he's going to hit me and he's going to break my jaw.'

"But he never did, I think he was very ashamed.

"Because of [my] childhood ... I felt under-loved and was always trying to make up for it through other relationships in life."

He goes on to say he has probably been married for the last time. But friends predict that Rushdie may find it hard to live up to that resolution for, as he implies on the TV couch, he is constantly looking for the love he never had as a child.

In Aimee Mullins perhaps he's finally met his match.