How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Author: Toby Young

Advertising and marketing with Reading based Apple Marketing

Essentially Toby Young started off life working on his own publication in a spare room where he was living. However, after awhile he managed to get a break and landed a glamorous (?) job at Vanity Fair.

The problem is that Toby Young decides to continuously antagonise his employers, shirk off work responsibilities and generally act like a spoilt child. So he’s not exactly coming across that great, right? Which I thought makes a nice change in an autobiography and he is self critical of his actions, although he shows no real signs of remorse.

Ok, so far so good. One star is a very low score and lets face it, it sounds like a great story. So it must be the writing, yes, it must be really bad? Well no, he writes fluidly and in a very easygoing manner, and he’s humorous and I reckon you will laugh, quite a bit, if you read the book. The problem is, I did a little looking around after reading it because some of the stories are just so fantastic as to not be believable. And this is where we reveal the nub of the matter. Most of it is simply just not true.

If I were to rate this book as a work of fiction or simply as a humorous exercise in journalism then I’d be giving it a 4. No problems. However, when you read a biography then you are trying to find out a little more about a person and what really happened in their life. As the book appears to be largely a fantasy that is only real in Toby Young’s head (if there), I can’t see how anyone could rate it any higher, when looking at it as a biography.

So there you go, if you simply fancy a bit of a chuckle, then yeah, read it and you’ll have some fun. But remember it’s just that.

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