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Bonfire of the Vanity Fairs - by Dirk Standen

In the gossip-fueled terrain of publishing hierarchies, rumors of explosive egos and callous backstabbing abound, and no glossy magazine factory is said to embody this ruthless legend more acutely -- and comically -- than Condé Nast, parent company of the word's most influential style mags and home to caricature-like big wigs who oversee their every move. Vanity Fair veteran Toby Young takes a bold stab at his former employees in his new tell-all How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, set to hit stores this July. In an exclusive interview, Gotham sits down with the renegade writer and some of his high-profile targets as they brace themselves for some serious vindication.

Over lunch at Michael's, the Midtown media commissary, Toby Young is indulging in what he calls "the ultimate revenge fantasy." Young, thirty-eight-year-old British journalist who endured a short but humiliating stint at Condé Nast's New York headquarters, is imagining whom he would cast in the movie of his life. "Knowing Graydon, he'd want Jack Nicholson to play him," Young says, referring to his former boss, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. "But I'm thinking Gary Shandling."

As for Tina Brown and Harry Evans, the British-born, Manhattan-based power couple with whom Young has been feuding for years, he has given that some thought, too. For Tina, he suggests Tracey Ullman. "She could do the right kind of malice," he says. And Harry? "It would have to be someone really, really old," Young muses, before naming a couple of crusty English character actors so ancient they are in fact dead.

The twist here is that Young isn't simply daydreaming. How To Lose Friends & Alienate People, his irresistably entertaining memoir about the downs and further downs of his glossy magazine career, doesn't arrive on these shores until July 4th, but it has already been optioned by Film Four in the UK. Young not only sold the rights for an undisclosed six figure sum, he is also writing the screenplay, and he says he will be consulted on the casting if the movie gets made. Half-jokingly, he claims that he can barely concentrate on his screenwriting chores so busy is he "obsessing over who's going to play whom."

The book has a number of themes. It offers a sustained critique of contemporary celebrity culture; it's also an accidental love story in which a feckless hack is saved from a life of dissipation by a good woman (Young moved back to London in 2000 to marry Caroline Bondy). No doubt the romantic element will be expanded in the screenplay. Let's face it, though: It's the fly-on-the-wall gossip, not the chronicling of Young's love life, that accounts for the book's growing buzz. "It's going to embarass certain people at Condé Nast," says Page Six editor Richard Johnson. "And the way it talks about the culture there in general is pretty unflattering."

According to Young, Condé Nast is a hellhole of vicious backstabbing, shameless status-grubbing, and strategic ass-kissing -- and that's just the morning elevator ride. Hierarchies are so rigidly observed that were Vogue editor Anna Wintour to fall flat on her face in a hallway, an intern would walk right by her rather than risk interacting with the boss. Some of Young's best tales have a whiff of the apocryphal about them, but he provides more than enough insider detail to keep the reader riveted.

Chief among the book's targets is Graydon Carter, who brought Young over from London as a Vanity Fair contributing editor in 1995. Carter serves as the Bond villain of the piece, a charismatic, dandified figure who wields an enormous influence and has all the best lines. When Young scuppers an interview with Nathan Lane by asking too many personal questions, Carter booms: "You can't ask Hollywood celebrities whether they're Jewish or gay. Just assume they're both Jewish and gay, okay?"

At times, Young exhibits a level of admiration for his ex-boss that borders on hero worship. But Carter, the erstwhile editor of the satirical monthly Spy, also comes across as an occasionally grandiose character in the book. He likes to greet new recruits with an intimidating speech about the "seven rooms" of power, and he boots Young out of a front row seat at a Calvin Klein fashion show with the words: "Toby, you can't sit in the front row. You're still in the first room."

Speaking candidly to Gotham about his former protégé, Carter says he feels "very betrayed." He points out that he offered Young a gig after the latter's humiliating ouster from the editorship of The Modern Review in London. "You don't repay kindness that way," he says, referring to the book's tell-all nature. Carter readily owns up to his fondness for the "seven rooms" theory of life. "It's fun," he says, "to mention someone and then say what room they're in." However, he denies that the Calvin Klein incident took place. "I might have thrown Toby out of any number of rooms, "he says, "but not in this case." Young insists that it occurred as written. "I sent a copy of the book to Graydon prior to publication," he says, "and he asked me to correct various factual inaccuracies, which I did. But he has never denied that incident. Until now."

Despite their differences, Carter says he still has an "inexplicable soft spot" for Young. Others are less indulgent. At least one of the book's subjects has sicced his lawyers on the publishers, and following the UK publication last fall, Young was banned from the Groucho , the formerly louche London members club. His offense: revealing that he had supplied artist Damien Hirst and others with cocaine during a Vanity Fair photo shoot there.

Young's victims claim that many of the book's incidents are grossly exaggerated. "It's extremely cartoonish and I was a bit irked about being taken out of context," says journalist Anthony Haden-Guest, who has nevertheless remained Young's friend. Young presents his older colleague as the kind of heavy-drinking ex-pat hack that he dreaded becoming, but Haden-Guest does not see any connection between their careers. "I'm a writer and he's not," he says, explaining that he writes books whereas Young's memoir is mostly a reworking of previously published magazine pieces.

It's hard to level a criticism at Young that the witty, self-deprecating author hasn't already anticipated, of course. The book's most embarrassing anecdotes are at his own expense. He depicts himself as the proverbial bull in a china shop, unwilling or unable to learn the rules and thus almost destined to run into trouble for such politically incorrect antics as hiring an office strippergram. Friends don't quite buy this self-portrait as a hapless loser, though. "That's his shtick," says Marie Claire fashion editor Lucy Sykes, who dated Young for seven months.

Sykes is not unfamiliar with Young's eccentricities. She remembers arriving at his apartment on one of their first dates only to find him in the process of dyeing his sparse hair blond. "Here he is: 5 foot 1, bald, with a plastic bag of bleach on his head," she recalls. "It was a George from Seinfeld moment." Still, Sykes insists that Young is a "really popular, funny guy. He's had fabulous girlfriends, everyone wants to be his friend, and he's invited to every party." (For the record, he is also somewhat taller than 5 foot 1).

So what really went wrong at Condé Nast? Sitting amid the salad eaters in Michael's, Young takes a bite of his steak and considers the question. "It was like I had a form of Tourette's Syndrome in which I almost involuntarily blurted out the most inappropriate thing," he says. "It must be because deep down I didn't really want to succeed in that world. My better self was at war with my more mercenary self."

Young presents himself as someone who has seen the error of his ways, a reformed character who has given up the glitz of Manhattan for the less racy, more domesticated charms of London. Not everyone believes he has kicked his addiction to glamour, though. "If Toby were paid $1,000 for every time he used the term supermodel, he'd be able to buy a rather nice sports car," says Haden-Guest. Young jokes that he has already written an Oscar acceptance speech in his head, and you suspect that this "ultimate revenge fantasy" won't be complete until he wins the Academy Award for best screenplay, snags an invite to the Vanity Fair party, and makes up with Graydon Carter while Cameron Diaz and Julia Roberts look on admiringly. Later, Jack Nicholson and Gary Shandling would stop by to offer congratulations.

That moment is some way off. In the meantime, lunch is coming to a close and Young has a meeting with his producer. As we leave Michael's, he takes out his wallet to extract a tip for the coat check attendent. Peeking out from the billfold: his old Vanity Fair press card.