The bookshop trestle table clearly ain’t big enough for the both of them. Novelist Salman Rushdie yesterday claimed to have broken wine writer Malcolm Gluck’s record for book signings after adding his full name to 1,000 books on a tour to promote his latest novel.

“His record is toast,” Rushdie crowed, in a letter to the Guardian.

Gluck started the controversy, questioning whether Rushdie could possibly have signed as many books as he had claimed, or whether he had just scribbled his initials.

Gluck’s claimed record is 1,001 copies in 59 minutes, set at a wine warehouse in London in 1998. Gluck achieved this with the help of a team of three men, one fetching the copies, one opening them at the blank page, and another whisking the signed copies away.

Rushdie said he had signed 1,000 copies, on his most recent tour promoting the Enchantress of Florence, in a books warehouse in Nashville in 57 minutes.

Rushdie insisted: “Let me be clear: I did not initial the books, but signed my full name.” The Best of Booker winner agreed that a crack team of book-handlers is essential.

“I did have the support of experienced staff at Ingrams book distributors in Nashville, (and at many other US bookstores), who will confirm that among the fastest present-day signers of books are President Jimmy Carter, the novelist Amy Tan, and myself,” he said.

“Well, if that’s true, I’m humbled,” Gluck said yesterday. “I’m delighted to learn of Salman’s achievement. I think it’s very funny actually, it’s like men boasting about the size of their sexual equipment, it’s got nothing to do with any other aspect of their personality. I doubt there will be any women going for this record, this is just such a male thing.”

The children’s author Jacqueline Wilson is also touted as a record-holder, not just for quantity but for how long she keeps going: she is famous for signing for as long as the queue lasts. At her most recent Hay book festival signing her queue caused chaos, forming hours before she arrived and snaking in and around all the other tents and lines.

Wilson’s assistants bring her cups of tea, which grow cold untouched on the table. She had to be helped to stand up after one eight-hour session.

Clearly, the only way to settle the matter is a sign-off, possibly when Gluck’s new book, The Great Wine Swindle – which may be his last, he believes, as it will insult absolutely everyone in the wine trade – is published this autumn.

And there is another contender. Thriller writer Ken Follett signed 2,050 copies in three-and-a-half hours at a book fair in Madrid earlier this year, beating his own record of 1,600 last year at a fair in Italy.

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