Salman Rushdie wins the right to have a Facebook account

DIVISIVE AUTHOR Salman Rushdie has announced a small victory, the right to have his own Facebook page.

The author fell out with the social network over the use of his pen name, which takes his middle name as his first. According to a report at the BBC, Facebook had insisted that he call himself Ahmed Rushdie, but has since relented.

"Victory! #Facebook has buckled! I'm Salman Rushdie again. I feel SO much better. An identity crisis at my age is no fun. Thank you Twitter!"

"Just received an apology from The #Facebook Team. All is sweetness and light," he added.

"Sweetness and light" is just about right. Rushdie had got himself rather worked up about the middle name denial. As well as listing other famous people known for using their middle names, he called out Mark Zuckerberg on Twitter and demanded that he prove himself to be who he claimed to be.

Other tweets from the Rushdie Twitter account riff on the same theme. "If F. Scott Fitzgerald was on #Facebook, would they force him to be Francis Fitzgerald? What about F. Murray Abraham?," he asked, and "Dear #Facebook, forcing me to change my FB name from Salman to Ahmed Rushdie is like forcing J. Edgar to become John Hoover." µ