BACK TO

by Jonathan Foreman

TOBY YOUNG'S wife Caroline is either a saint or a masochist. If even half of the hilarious confessions in this second volume of memoirs are true, then the journalist who has turned his successive sackings into literary and West End gold is a Nick Hornby character come to life: selfish, immature, and utterly craven whenever fame, glamour or literary success seem to be within reach.

His need for attention is so deep that even she is driven to say: 'You've turned into Paris Hilton. Is there nothing to which you won't stoop?' The answer, of course, is no. When Toby Young wants to make a contact, make a deal, save money, or show off he becomes reckless to the point of madness, a man without filter or restraint. At one point in this book he hires a paparazzo to help him stalk a Hollywood film producer who has stopped returning his calls. Moreover, he seems to be afflicted by a psychological disorder that simply compels him to offend. Some people believe it's all just shtick, grist for Young's books and plays. They say there is no way that a writer so good at dropping a punchline at just the right spot could be so socially and professionally tone deaf. But he isn't tone deaf. When he's delivering a best man's speech at his friend's wedding to a half-German girl, he knows he shouldn't make one anti-German joke after another, but he just can't help it. His compulsion to say the wrong thing is simply stronger than any other part of his character.

The original Young opus, How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, recounted the bumptious, drunken author's five years trying to make it in the world of glossy New York journalism, culminating in his firing from Vanity Fair. The sequel is a meandering account of what happened next: his engagement, his return to England, his humiliating assignments as a freelancer, his hilarious interactions with Boris Johnson at the Spectator, his attempts to break into Hollywood, and finally marriage and fatherhood. The Hollywood material is by far the best. Young's ear for dialogue just gets better and better, and his education in the ways of Hollywood's status system by his pal Rob Long is a delight.

That said, The Sound Of No Hands Clapping isn't nearly as good as its predecessor. There's far too much padding between comic set pieces, and if you follow the author's newspaper work you'll have seen most of this material before. (As a journalist, Toby was legendarily good at 'recycling' his material, publishing dangerously similar articles in magazines on both sides of the Atlantic in the days before the internet made such economic use of work impossible.) Mind you, the book is still sidesplittingly funny. I laughed out loud several times in every chapter. I suspect it works so brilliantly as comedy because there is something oddly endearing about Young's rhino-skinned persona. It helps that he is a perceptive anatomist of the high status worlds he wants to conquer, and also that he is a clever, passionate observer of pop culture (he was co-founder with Julie Burchill of the late, great Modern Review ).

Moreover the man who, when I first met him two decades ago, was the most obnoxious Oxbridge undergraduate of his generation has mellowed. You can sense the decent fellow underneath. Indeed, the new book contains genuinely moving and inspiring passages about the deadend frustrations of journalism, and the way that marriage can make even the most immature and selfish man think about growing up. Though it will probably go to his head, Young has become Britain's answer to Larry David (the creator of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm). Maybe he'll follow David's route and attain stardom by making a slightly fictionalised television series about himself. One of the things revealed by this book is that for all his self-deprecation Young is both hard working and brave. Where most journalists fearful of remaining hacks into middle age only talk about writing plays, films and books, Toby gives it a go. So far he's been a success at two out of three. Which means either that he's not nearly the selfsaboteur he would have everyone believe, or that hideous social and professional faux-pas don't get in the way of success if you have enough underlying talent and perseverance.

The Daily Mail, Sept 15, 2006