" of tankers involved in dodging the sanctions.

"I doubt that he would open his heart to me. And so I thought, well, I could open it by myself. I'd probably do it better than a real conversation would."The fictional conversation was brought to life by BBC film-maker Alan Yentob in an artificial intelligence animation created for a documentary last year.

The results were "very startling", Sir Salman said on Monday. "I have to say it certainly made a point."The author was speaking on Radio 4 to pay tribute to Yentob, the BBC's former creative director, who died on Saturday."Apart from everything that everybody's been saying about him - that he was an unbelievable champion of the arts and so on - he also had a real gift for friendship," he said. "He was a very strong ally in bad times."

Sir Salman added: "He was a great programme maker, and I hope that's how he will be primarily remembered."Yentob leaves a "colossal" legacy, he said. "He's one of the giants of British media in the last generation, and I think he will be remembered as a maker of great programmes, as an enabler of great programmes."

The pair's personal and professional relationship extended to Yentob famously enlisting Sir Salman to take part in a spoof arm wrestle for a scene in BBC mockumentary W1A.

"People keep asking me who won," Sir Salman said. "And of course nobody won because it was complete fraud."to follow the world's top tech stories and trends.

Few 27-year-olds look at used cooking oil and see a green business opportunity to produce soap or dog food.But that is what Hugo Daniel Chávez, a project manager for the NGO Sustenta Honduras, has done.

"We have so many businesses and domestic practices that create waste, so we are trying to transform waste and give it a second life," he tells the BBC.Across Latin America, several million tonnes of cooking oil are consumed every year. It is often used to fry food, mostly chicken, plantain strips, chips and pork.