Losing the plot oh so slowly

Well, it is an honest title. Or one has every reason to assume it is. This tale of a young man on the make begins with him at Christ Church College, Oxford, inexpertly smoking dope and declaring that he both wants to be a Hooray Henry and like The Smiths.

His middle-class, Birmingham background makes the former a tricky proposition; his Supertramp records - this would be in around 1983 - would appear to insulate him from the prospect of coolness. One looks at the brief author biog at the front and notes that he is the rock critic for the Telegraph, which could be charitably said to be the best achievable, if not exactly the most satisfactory, synthesis of the two positions.

In the book he calls himself Josh Devereux. This shows at least passing respect for the conventions of thin disguise, unlike that French woman who bonked everyone (Catherine M? I can't recall the sordid details) and couldn't even be bothered to give herself another name.

It turns out that we have to wait quite a while before Delingpole/Devereux (hereinafter referred to as "D") has to confront the ethically problematic matter of naming the people he has slept with; for most of the time, or at least until he loses his cherry at the age of 19, the only person readily available for sexual congress is himself.

Typical sentence: "back in my room, I have a frenzied wank." It is not quite the same way as Martin Amis used to do it. Write about it, I mean.

People will not try and sound cleverer than they are by trying to mimic Delingpole's cadences, his turns of phrase. The adjectives he uses come off the top of the pile, which at least makes for a gentle holiday read.

But it is amusing enough if you are categorically not waiting for the next Martin Amis.

Incidentally, D does give The Rachel Papers a name-check when getting anxious about his lack of early success; and Delingpole himself, in a recent article for The Spectator, favourably compared his own new novel not only to Amis, but to Irvine Welsh, Evelyn Waugh, Dave Eggers and Jonathan Franzen.

To which the kindly response is that articles written for The Spectator on the subject of one's own third novel are not to be considered as of unimpugnable veracity.

He is not, by his own admission, a born writer, although he agonises enough about his prose style when he gets a job on the Londoner's Diary of this very paper. Which section, by the way, contains the best jokes and the most memorably hilarious gaffes.

Between the wanking and the screwing-up we read much about D's drug experiences. Many people find drug stories, like dreams, inherently uninteresting, but I like a good drug story myself, and his recall of the early Ecstasy scene is very impressive.