No success like failure

I must, as they say, declare an interest: Toby Young used to be my editor on The Modern Review, that magazine which only truly registered with the public when its proprietor, Julie Burchill, left her partner, Cosmo Landesman, for the critic and soon-to-be columnist, Charlotte Raven. After an editorial meeting in which the senior staff demanded a change of direction, Toby went back to his flat in Shepherd's Bush, compiled a best-of edition of the magazine and then closed it down. Then he left for America to seek his fortune at Vanity Fair.

I wish I had some kind of score to settle with him: disappointingly, perhaps, he was always civil to me. Others wished him ill, and the legacy of one such feud manifests itself in the strapline on the front cover, from Julie Burchill herself: "I'll rot in hell before I give that little bastard a quote for his book." Novel, I think you'll agree. The quotes on the back are also uncomplimentary. They have to be: this is a book about failure. And, it has to be said, a very successful one.

To move to America at the invitation of Graydon Carter was, for Young, a very big deal. He had worshipped New York hacks whether they were depicted in American films, from the screwball classics to The Sweet Smell of Success, or real-life characters such as Dorothy Parker and the rest of the Algonquin crowd. He liked America's freedoms, its pop culture, its celebrity worship. He felt up to Manhattan's challenge.

He screwed up in almost every conceivable way. On his first day, having been assured that the staff at Vanity Fair dress "real casual", he turns up in jeans and a Modern Review T-shirt - the one with Keanu Reeves and the headline "young, dumb, and full of come". He is sent up with the couriers.

"Real casual" turns out to mean "fairly expensive suits". He makes un-PC comments which would cause little stir here but result in stern memos being left on his desk. He thinks it a wheeze to hire a strippergram for a colleague - but forgets it is "take your daughter to work" day.

His ideas for articles suck. He almost never gets laid, and humiliatingly finds out why. His drinking gets out of control. Even Anthony Haden-Guest tells him to cool it.

But his worst enemy - besides himself - is the hypocritical celebrity culture of the magazine world itself, where stars and their PR people can effectively end your career if you say anything they consider uncomplimentary. About this, Young is not only revealing but useful: and from it he discerns something about the American character itself; and indeed about himself.

This book has all the ingredients for a dire, selfserving and embarrassing memoir. Yet it's not: it's actually a highly entertaining rebuke to everyone who doubted his abilities. It will not reopen any doors in America for him: but for those of us who like Schadenfreude and the spectacle of someone making an absolute ass of himself, it is delightful. It even has a happy ending; and even Julie Burchill likes it.

www.tobyyoung.co.uk