Misbehaving works for him

WHEN life handed British journalist Toby Young lemons, as the cliche goes, he made lemonade. Not just any lemonade. After getting fired from his dream job as a writer for Vanity Fair magazine -- for repeatedly embarrassing editor Graydon Carter with stunts such as sending a strippergram to a colleague on Take Our Daughters to Work Day and snorting cocaine with bad-boy artist Damien Hirst during a photo shoot -- Young published a memoir in 2001 about his self-abuse and social stupidity titled "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People."

But it didn't end there. Young continued to take his limited experiences and juice them beyond any reasonable expectation. He created an extensive body of work based around a handful of personal misfortunes and embarrassing social interactions, backdropped by Manhattan's gimlet swirl and peopled by vapid fashionistas, snobs and boldfaced names.

Those incidents have graced the page (in book form and dozens of newspaper and magazine articles), the stage and now the screen. All the more surprising for a guy who seems to invariably provoke strong reactions in those he meets, who's variously been described in the British press as "a bold satirist" and a "skinny-chested opportunist with the looks of a punctured beachball, the charisma of a glovepuppet and an ego the size of a Hercules supply plane."

Via e-mail, Vanity Fair's editor explained his surprise at Young's ability to parlay an undistinguished six-month stint at the magazine into an oeuvre. "I can only compare it with a brief one-night stand that results in octuplets," Carter said.

Initially rejected by 22 publishers, "How to Lose Friends" became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic and went on to be translated into 12 languages including Bulgarian, Mandarin and Croatian. It was adapted into a one-man show; first in London's Soho with Jack Davenport (Norrington in the blockbuster "Pirates of the Carribean" movie franchise) as its star and then later on the city's theater-rich West End with Young handling acting duties himself.

On Friday, a fictionalized version of Young's tale of self-immolation will reach its widest audience yet with the release of "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People" the movie -- an R-rated romantic comedy starring "Shaun of the Dead" star Simon Pegg, Jeff Bridges and Kirsten Dunst. The film's U.K. publicity touts it as "a true story based on a real idiot." (In what is certainly not a vote of confidence for the film, its director Robert Weide declined to be interviewed for this story.)