By 1983, Brooklyn-born writer, editor and socialite Bob Colacello had had enough. As one of Andy Warhol’s trusted lieutenants, the preceding decade had catapulted him from obscurity to one of New York society’s most influential figures. As editor of Interview magazine, owned and published by Warhol, he was out every night, holding court at Studio 54, making the scene at downtown art openings, packing a tape recorder and camera, to capture the world’s jet-set at play. Interview, he says now, was the ‘school newspaper’ for the social elite of the day – and he was the school newspaper editor.

But, as 1982 drew to a close, Colacello was grinding to a halt. Worn down by the demands of running a magazine, dealing with the Byzantine politics that governed the Warhol clique and realising his career was in danger of becoming forever entwined with the artist, he finally broke from the artist’s world for the relatively sane environs of Vanity Fair, where he has remained ever since.

Today, more than 25 years later, Bob Colacello is sitting at Dubai’s 360° bar. Copies of his latest book, Bob Colacello’s Out, a revealing photo diary of that candescent period from 1975 to ’82, sit in a rapidly diminishing pile on a table, as Dubai’s party mavens queue to get their copies signed.

From Mick and Bianca to the Kennedys, Truman Capote to Debbie Harry, Calvin Klein to Jimmy Carter, Out is a document of the pinnacle of New York’s social scene. Warhol himself is in many of the shots, his strange, slab-like face creased with joy at finding himself caught in a corner with Liz Taylor or plainly awed at being introduced to Henry Kissinger. The parade of dramas, scandals and gossip is joyous, yet tinged with poignancy – so many faces here, frozen in a monochrome moment of immortality, were to succumb to illness, drugs, Aids or other tragedies within the next few years. But, for the moment, looking at these pictures plunges the viewer into a lost world of innocent exuberance.

‘I think it happened because of several factors,’ Colacello says of the era vividly captured in Out. ‘The Vietnam war had just ended. Nixon had been driven out of office, there was a lifting of this heaviness.

And then came along this great new black music, disco. You’d go to Studio 54, which was a symbol of the era – it was in the middle of New York, it was large, it was gay and straight, it was black and white, it was uptown and downtown, old and young…’

But, amid the glamour and revels, a typical night at 54 for Colacello and Warhol was always work. The artist was notorious for his constantly ‘on’ attitude, never missing a beat or wasting an opportunity to score some advertising for Interview, or perhaps bagging a lucrative portrait commission or two.

‘If Andy could have interviewed every single person alive, every single day and photographed and videoed them – then maybe he would have been satisfied!’ Bob remembers.