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Less than Ab Fab at Vanity Unfair - November 9th 2001 - by Lloyd Evans

TOBY YOUNG is a balding, bug-eyed, skinny-chested opportunist with the looks of a punctured beach-ball, the charisma of a glove-puppet and an ego the size of a Hercules supply plane.

He has spent 15 years posing as a lad-journalist while discreetly putting it about that he is also a first-class philosopher.

His working method consists of greasing up to celebrities, hawking blatant fictions, knifing his colleagues in the back and ingesting enough alcohol to turn his liver into an elongated walnut.

I speak as one of his friends, of course, and having read his book I can't say my opinion has particularly changed. He's a great guy - and I can't stand the sight of him. Which is probably fine by Toby. He's the man who loves to be hated.

The back-stabbing creep first clambered into public view when his pretentious thinking mag, The Modern Review, collapsed in a barrage of slander and recrimination.

His co-editor Julie Burchill popped her head out of the coven to place a witch's curse on his career. "He'll have to leave the country," she hissed.

Gelded of his livelihood, Toby slipped away to New York determined to prove himself as an editor. His declared aim was "to take Manhattan". How To Lose Friends & Alienate People contains everything he learned in the attempt.

He managed to worm his way into the offices of Vanity Fair, where Graydon Carter, the bullying editor, hired him for $60,000 a year merely to humiliate him. Every story-idea Toby submitted was dismissed as a "dog-whistle" ("You can hear it but I can't").

Unable to get his work published in the magazine, Toby took notes instead. His portrait of the New York glossy-posse is both fascinating and repugnant.

Fashion editors ran their departments like feudal rajahs, treating the sub-editors and auxiliary staff no better than bonded serfs. Company messengers were dispatched across town to return overdue videos. Fact-checkers were expected to spend their days baby-sitting pet dogs.

"I believe in excess," vowed on editorial director. "Waste is very important in creativity."

The magazine's executives lived off the tribute of fawning public relations firms. Theatre tickets, beauty treatments, designer clothing and even diamond jewellry would arrive unsolicited on their desks.

One contributing editor held "sample sales" of designer dresses in her flat, pocketing thousands of dollars every few months. Each day at 5pm, the streets around Vanity Fair grew dark with shoals of limousines arriving to carry department heads to film premieres and fashion shows.

Without a decent income or professional status, Toby found himself an outsider at this orgy of self-indulgence. (One debutante described her $40 million inheritance as "tip money".)

In order to advance his fortunes, he attempted to pull rank. As his father is a Labour peer, Toby is technically an "Honourable", and he applied for an American Express card using his full style and dignity.

He was sent a letter of welcome addressed "Dear Hon" and a credit card embossed with the name "Hon Young", which created the imptession that he'd rustled it from the wallet of some stabbed Korean businessman.

He fared no better trying to ingratiate himself with celebrities. He managed to congratulate Kenneth Branagh on his title performance in a film that starred Mel Gibson. He greeted Jim Carrey with a masterpiece of subtle flattery - "You should have won an Oscar for Dumb & Dumber" - and then found himself outdone by a screen-writer who treated Carrey like a human being instead of a visitor from divine regions.

He was phsyically bundled out of an Oscar party just as he was about to shake hands with Ranulph Fiennes.

Whatever he did, Toby always ended up on the wrong side of the velvet rope. He was sacked from Vanity Fair, then sued by former editor Harold Evans, and ended up reviewing interactive sex toys for trashy lad-magazines. So much for "taking Manhattan".

Though it hurts to admit it, I found this a fascinating memoir. Gossipy, funny, perceptive, self-mocking and even (considering the heartless and cynical pen from which it flows) rather moving, as his writes of his mother's death and confronts his fraught relationship with his father.

He comes across as a thoughtful, troubled soul who suffers from a five-star persecution complex. A pathetic man, in both senses. His enemies will find plenty of fresh ammunition here. So will his friends. And as the book moves into the bestseller list, I look forward to loathing him all over again, the obnoxious little squirt.

Mind you, that's the great thing about Toby. You can malign him to your heart's content and instead of suing you, he'll take you out to lunch.

Well, Tobes, how about it? Now that I've reviewed your damn book, let's say Quaglino's, tomorrow, 12.30 pm. And don't forget your chequebook, you tight-fisted slimeball.