Over the past 25 years, I've become something of an expert on how to fail upwards. I've written a 10-point guide to the art in this week's Spectator and a 3,000-word essay on the subject for Monster.com. Finally, I recently recorded a podcast about my unusual career trajectory -- downwards and upwards at the same time -- for Workology.com.

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People was the number one film at the UK box office this weekend, beating Taken into second place and Tropic Thunder into third. Long may its reign continue.

Two excellent reviews -- excellently written, if not unqualified raves -- from Cosmo Landesman in The Sunday Times and Philip French in The Observer.

So far, How to Lose Friends has been well-reviewed by Jonathan Ross, the Guardian, the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mirror and the Evening Standard. Not too shabby.

I met him once: in Elaine's in New York in the late 90s and, yes, I was drunk. Fortunately, I told him that Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which he wrote, is a great film -- a kind of weird, left-field masterpiece. I wasn't making it up, either. He was so chuffed he introduced me to his teenage son who was sitting in the back and got me to repeat everything I'd just said. The son was incredibly skeptical -- he thought, like most people, that Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is just a piece of soft porn trash -- so I told him how wrong he was and what a great writer his father is.