The San Remo apartment building. (AFP)

New York, June 12: Even for a rock star used to playing before vast crowds, it was one of the most intimidating audiences of his career.

At stake was an apartment worth many millions of dollars at one of Manhattan’s most exclusive addresses, and Sting was prepared to do anything to win the approval of his snobbish neighbours.

On the orders of his estate agent, the singer took a limousine to the establishment tailor Brooks Brothers, on Fifth Avenue, and bought himself a suit. Only then did he present himself to the interview board at the prestigious 88 Central Park West.

Sting passed muster; he was one of the lucky ones. New York’s notorious co-op boards ? residential committees that guard the entry to Manhattan’s most upmarket flats ? have claimed the scalps of stars from Cher and Billy Joel to Diane Keaton and Mariah Carey.

Now, the author Stephen Gaines has set the city talking by lifting the lid on the rarefied world of Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue and Central Park West, and the lengths to which the stars will go to win entry.

As The Sky’s The Limit: Passion and Property in Manhattan, published last week, reveals, fame counts for little against the ranks of mainly white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (Wasps) manning the barricades of “old money” hoping to protect their privacy.

According to Gaines, who spent four years researching the book, co-ops have a list of undesirables ? people who are single (who knows whom they might marry?), those in a “lunatic” or second marriage, rich and pretty divorcees, and stars trailed by the paparazzi who lower the social tone.

Gaines tells how one notable fashion designer hoping to move into 55 Central Park West did not tell the board that her husband was terminally ill because single women are less likely to be approved. Another designer, Bill Blass, had to promise in writing that he would not have overnight guests.

Many boards on the old money, eastern side of Central Park rebuff Jews and other ethnic minorities in ways that would be illegal at a golf club or private school.

Barbra Streisand thought she had a buyer for her 17-room apartment on Central Park West when she struck a $10-million deal with singer Mariah Carey. The arrangement fell through, however, when Carey arrived for her co-op board interview in a dress revealing her navel and with three black bodyguards.

After the inevitable rejection, Streisand was forced to sell her flat on the star-studded street ? also favoured by actor Robin Williams and Larry Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle, the software giant ? for a modest $4 million.

Madonna, another famous reject, had wanted to live on the street even after making the mistake of posing nude for Playboy. Her efforts to make amends by arriving at her interview wearing black, teamed with pearls and a gold crucifix, were to no avail: the apartment in the San Remo building would not be hers.

“If we let her in,” one board member told the New York Daily News, “we’d have to let everybody in.”

Occasionally, unlikely candidates triumph. In 1999, fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger managed to gain acceptance at 820 Fifth Avenue, the most coveted address in New York. The building had already rejected three billionaires, including Ronald Perelman, the chief executive of Revlon.

Hilfiger managed to prove to the board that he was an upstanding family man and a noted philanthropist.