Some of the best conversation starters are the least likely invitees to what is, after all, the World Economic Forum. As one executive puts it: ““There are three kinds of people at Davos. World leaders, economic leaders and the entertainment.’’ This year, the entertainment included Mexican magical realist Laura Esquivel (the author of ““Like Water for Chocolate’’), who talked cooking, and broccoli cultist Dean Ornish. Not to mention:

Patriarch Bartholomew

His Holiness teamed up with Her Royal Highness, Princess Anne, to cochair a discussion entitled ““Globalization With a Human Face.''

Brian Eno

““A mammal, an Anglo-Saxon, an uncle, a celebrity, a masturbator.’’ This was Brian Eno’s description of himself in his published diary, ““A Year With Swollen Appendices’’ (Faber & Faber, 1996). A former boa-wearing member of glam-rock band Roxy Music, Eno is in Davos as part of the Long Now Foundation, an environmental group. The group’s Millennium Clock, engineered to run for 10,000 years, features sounds created by Eno. Eno also has a connection to corporate Davos–he created the noise that accompanies the Microsoft Windows 95 start command.

Benjamin Zander

The subject of a recent BBC documentary entitled ““Living on One Buttock,’’ Zander (who can’t seem to stay fully seated on the piano bench) is a musician, a conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and a highly paid motivational speaker. His ““Bridges to Possibility’’ session was a smash hit last week at Davos. Zander had 200 world leaders singing ““Happy Birthday’’ at the top of their lungs to a particular Birthday Boy from the World Bank.

Paulo Coelho

The Brazilian pop writer told NEWSWEEK he came to the World Economic Forum ““because we need to talk more about the feminine side of the soul.’’ Of course, he probably isn’t doing his literary profile any harm, either. Mystical journeys of self-discovery are what Coelho writes, and he has sold 22 million copies of his 12 books.

Volker Schlondorff

The Davos planners made a good choice when they put this German filmmaker on a panel pondering ““The Vanishing of European Cinema.’’ He hasn’t had a hit since his 1979 movie adaptation of Gunter Grass’s novel ““The Tin Drum.’’ Not that’s he sweating it. Volker says he came to Davos to make a comeback–on the ski slopes.