Books & Poetry

Toby Young doesn’t know this, but a couple of years ago he and I did jury service at the same time. While we were waiting to be picked for a trial, he fashioned a little office for himself in the middle of the dining area before embarking on a series of loud, self-aggrandising mobile phone conversations. ‘Who does that twat think he is?’ wondered the guy next to me. It was a good question.

To be fair, ‘How to Lose Friends and Alienate People’, the Modern Review-founder-turned-Spectator-theatre-critic-turned-playwright’s account of his disastrous stint writing glorified captions for Vanity Fair in New York, was fresh, funny and endearing. ‘No Hands Clapping’ finds Young coping with the fall-out from that first book, as well as taking advantage of the breaks it gave him, like working on a screenplay for a big-shot producer. Young’s gossipy style is so addictive, it’s a while before you notice a) that all the stuff about his marriage and impending fatherhood is pure padding, and b) how unconvincing his I’m-such-a-failure routine has become. By most people’s standards, having a book optioned by FilmFour is quite an achievement, even if the company does get closed down six weeks later. Realising this, Young frantically overplays the schlemiel card in stories that feel massively embellished, if not actually made-up. (Was he really reduced to stalking the big-shot producer in a paparazzo’s van?)

The other problem is that while ‘How to Lose Friends’ was at heart a written-for-Brits critique of US media culture, this has America in its sights. So Young’s wife’s habit of fanning herself ironically whenever William Hague appears on TV has to be explained as ‘a reference to the fact that he wasn’t exactly considered a sex symbol’. Thanks for that. For all his egomaniacal excesses, though, Young remains a solid comic writer with a flair for dialogue and a winning awareness of his own absurdity. I couldn’t put this down – and believe me, I tried.