Review: How to Lose Friends And Alienate People

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There is a great deal to enjoy in this amusing roman à clef based on British journalist Toby Young's best-selling memoir of his rather less than glorious two years as a contributing editor of the prestigious magazine Vanity Fair in New York.

For obvious reasons Young's sardonic story of decline and fall has been smartly fictionalised by screenwriter Peter Straughan.

He has given the book's series of autobiographical vignettes an effective narrative arc which neatly takes celebrity-obsessed Sidney Young (Simon Pegg) from the creative chaos of co-editing the Post Modern Review magazine in London to New York when Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges), editor of the celebrated Sharps magazine, unexpectedly offers Young a job.