Losing is the new winning

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
15, Nationwide

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is based on Toby Young’s best-selling memoir of the same name and, already, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: what, a film based on Toby’s book? Well, he kept that very quiet, the sly old devil. Who’d have thought it? I even suspect that although, in the end, Toby did attend the recent glitzy, red carpet première in London — you saw him lined up with all the other celebrities in the following day’s papers, surely — he probably wasn’t that keen, probably protested with something along the lines of: ‘It’s just not my thing. Can’t I stay in and watch telly instead? You go. Who’s interested in me anyway?’

But here it is, whether he likes it or not, with its A-list cast including Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Gillian Anderson and Jeff Bridges, not that any of this would impress Toby — ‘Please, stop! This is all so embarrassing!’ — and as directed by Robert Weide, who also directed many of the episodes of Curb your Enthusiasm, possibly the greatest sitcom of all time (bar My Family, of course, and On the Buses). Still, I’m not sure that the film ever properly captures the book, which doesn’t mean it’s not an enjoyable film, or that films should always be religiously faithful to books — they must always seek to cut it in their own right — but just that if it had captured the book, it would be a much smarter, sharper film. I have no idea if Toby agrees with this or not, have yet to ask him, but I will certainly do so once all the fuss has all died down and he’s stopped lying low.

Have you read the book? If not, you should. I read it first on a long train journey, didn’t put it down, and laughed out loud a lot, although there is never any point telling Toby any of this (‘Please, stop. Why are you always embarrassing me like this?’). The book, published in 2001, charts Toby’s move from London to New York to become a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he screwed up big time — inadvertently ordering a stripogram to come into the office on Take your Daughter to Work Day, for example; getting coked-up with Damien Hirst at a photoshoot, for example — and was fired less than two years later.

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