An American journalist called David Carr wrote an amusing piece for the New York Times earlier this week about the latest British invasion. To hear him tell it, we’ve captured the commanding heights of the US media, including Vogue, Cosmopolitan, NBC News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News and, of course, the New York Times itself, which is run by former BBC director-general Mark Thompson. The latest citadel to fall is The Daily Show, with a Brummie comedian having temporarily taken over presenting duties from Jon Stewart.
The article produced mixed feelings in me because I spent the years 1995–2000 trying to ‘take’ Manhattan, all to no avail. For me, America wasn’t the land of opportunity. It was the land of the unreturned phone call. I had the right accent, the right Fleet Street background and the right mentor in the form of Graydon Carter, the editor in chief of Vanity Fair. So where did it all go wrong?
Until now, I’ve always attributed my failure to being too British. In spite of bowing and scraping to the rich and powerful, my basic contempt for those in authority shone through. There was a raspberry-blowing anarchist just beneath the surface and he would always emerge after a couple of drinks and wreak havoc.
To give just one example, I managed to persuade Graydon to let me come to the 1996 Vanity Fair Oscar party on the strict understanding that I wouldn’t bother any of the celebrities. I managed to stick to this rule until I spotted Mel Gibson, by which time I’d had a couple of whiskies. I marched straight up to him and accused him of being an ‘anti-Brit-ite’, a reference to Braveheart, which he’d just won two Oscars for.
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