The foreword to Tom Sykes's memoir is a giveaway that this will be a milder work about alcoholism and drug abuse than usual. "Everything in this book is absolutely true," it proclaims, before adding the anaemic qualifier that "sequences have been rearranged and conversations recreated, often on the basis of subsequent interviews".
The striking feature of Sykes's account of his life as a young journalist whooping it up in London and New York is how fun it all seems. The most fashionable establishments open their doors to him, with little more payment required than a favourable mention in one of the organs that he wrote for (GQ or the New York Post), and he is able to lead a life that rivals Restoration rakes for hedonistic excess. Of course, this leads to bizarre escapades – he is nearly shot by the NYPD for trying to break into the wrong flat – but the overall tone is light and picaresque.
Sykes is aware of the eye-catching value of a good pun or a witty aside, but the book's greatest problem is that it suffers from the usual repetitive problems of reading about drink and drug use. It takes a Bukowski or a Hunter S Thompson to elevate the squalid to the sublime, and Sykes isn’t in the same class. Nevertheless, this is a breath of fresh (if slightly fetid) air.
