It's every graduate’s dream job. Brian Grazer, the Oscar-winning producer of The Da Vinci Code, American Gangster and A Beautiful Mind, is looking for a personal cultural attaché to keep him in touch with the world beyond Hollywood.

Grazer is offering to pay an assistant £40,000 a year to read books for him, accompany him on his private jet and fix interviews with everyone from Buddhist monks to mafia bosses. No previous experience of the film industry is required.

According to an e-mail advertising the job: “This person would be responsible for keeping Brian abreast of everything that’s going on in the world; politically, culturally, musically . . . They’re also responsible for finding an interesting person for Brian to meet every week. This could mean an astronaut, a journalist, a philosopher, a Buddhist monk – someone who has made an impression in their field.

“Grazer may ask you to read any book he’s interested in. You may be required to travel with him on his private plane to Hawaii, New York and Europe, teaching him anything he asks you about along the way . . . You will be to Grazer what Karl Rove [formerly chief political adviser] was to Bush.”

Grazer’s hits cover eclectic subjects ranging from 8 Mile, about Eminem, the rapper, to A Beautiful Mind, which he filmed after reading part of a book about John Forbes Nash, the mathematician.

Ed Cooke, 26, a philosophy and psychology graduate from Oxford University, was among those who failed to make the cut. Cooke came seventh in this year’s World Memory Championships, speaks three languages and has an interest in the “philosophy of cricket”.

He sent a list of interesting people for Grazer to interview, including Shane Warne, the cricketer, and Rory Stewart, the writer and adventurer. Cooke, from west London, said: “It looked like the coolest job ever. It pays you to do exactly what you would do if you had money: schmooze, meet cool people and travel all over the world. It’s the stuff of Hollywood legend.”

For more than 20 years Grazer has employed cultural attachés who have introduced him to figures including Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine, Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, and Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point.

He said recently in an interview with Lizzie Widdicombe in The New Yorker: “I like to meet people in dangerous organisations and my cultural attaché finds out who that person is – who runs yakuza, the Japanese criminal gangs, or the masons, or MI5. I’m looking for a person who has a teacher-like quality. Also it’s good to have a person who is a connector, who is liked by people.”

He rates Brad Grossman, his current attaché, as the best he has had. Grossman, 32, owned a tutoring business before taking the job and is now leaving the post after four years.

Others have not been as professional. “A few years ago I hired this smarty-pants Harvard guy,” said Grazer. “He was just remarkably lazy. Under no condition can you teach curiosity.”

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