Death by Leisure: A Cautionary Tale
by Chris Ayres
320pp, John Murray, £12.99
National stereotypes may be unforgivably lazy journalism but, goodness, they get spun into lucrative literary careers by journalists. Bill Bryson, Peter Mayle, even Helen Fielding (via the "American stick insect Natasha" in Bridget Jones' Diary) have all parlayed some of the most tried and tired cultural clichés into very funny books.
From the first page Chris Ayres gleefully suggests he's doing something similar in his second memoir, Death by Leisure. The West Coast correspondent for the Times (or "showbiz reporter" as he's occasionally referred to, much to his irritation) is lying by a pool on a typically hot day in Los Angeles, next to a typically perfect Californian woman wearing a white bikini and, of course, gold jewellery. Ayres, born and bred in Wooler, a pocket of northern England where "not even the Romans could be bothered to go", is wearing jeans, heavy ribbed socks, shoes, a sweater and sweat. In a predictably fruitless attempt to impress the babe, he runs home to change into his summer clothes: T-shirt, sandals and socks. The faint scent of Lynx and Clearasil may go unmentioned but is unmissable.
Death by Leisure is basically a sequel to 2005's War Reporting for Cowards, in which Ayres was transplanted from his cushy Californian niche to Baghdad, which turned out to be even more scary than trying to blag one's way into an Oscars party. Now Ayres is back reporting beneath LA's "big, dumb and happy" blue sky. Not that it's an entirely comfortable set-up. When he's not fending off demands for stories from his editor, he's attempting to impress unimpressable girls by inviting them to glitzy parties he's not invited to himself, taking out loans from dubious financiers with names like Flip and trying to meet women by selling broken furniture online.
Then there's the apocalyptic Californian weather, which he frets about like a native (and uses as a pathetic fallacy for his moods - drought for desperation, floods for romantic troubles - which seems clumsy at best, solipsistic at worst).
But although he may be getting fake tans and caviar facials, the endless self-deprecation is definitely English. From Ayres's self-description it's a marvel he managed to get to his late 20s without having killed himself by walking into a lamppost, as opposed to becoming a successful journalist with a dream job before his 30th birthday.
Whereas War Reporting for Cowards used a genuinely funny and original set-up - Hollywood reporter reluctantly transplanted to the frontline - the tale of a hapless, balding, shamelessly shallow British male trying to crash his way into the glamorous American set might have the funny quotient, but is lacking somewhat in originality. Unfortunately for Ayres, his book labours under a more ominous shadow than the tropical storm clouds: Toby Young, and his How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, which treads a very similar red carpet. The author's physical resemblance to Young, displayed for to see all on the front cover, only makes the similarities more marked, as does the adulatory quote by Young himself on the press release (unsurprisingly, he loves Ayres' book).
But originality is never essential in LA and this is, cheesy final paragraphs aside, a very funny book with nice comic timing. Any man who asks "How in the name of Christ did I manage to screw up a book that cost $5,000?" (here's a clue: it involved Michael Jackson) is, like LA itself, too silly to resist.
· Hadley Freeman's The Meaning of Sunglasses: A Guide to (Almost) All Things Fashionable is published by Viking
