Well, the verdict is in. The Supreme Court of the London Media, otherwise know as the Directors of the Groucho Club, met last week to consider my case and quickly reached a unanimous decision. They've elected to throw me out. The remainder of my annual subscription will be refunded. I am the weakest link. Goodbye.
My crime was to write about a cocaine-taking incident that occurred during a photo shoot for Vanity Fair's 'Cool Britannia' issue at the club. I was the editor in charge and in my recently published book I reveal that Damien Hirst and Keith Allen, the photo's two subjects, demanded I supply them with alcohol and cocaine as a condition of posing for the camera.
Needless to say, things soon got out of hand and I felt like a supply teacher presiding over a group of naughty schoolchildren. I didn't help matters by dipping into the Bolivian marching powder myself. It was like an X-rated episode of Men Behaving Badly . I didn't think the Groucho would mind if I wrote about this. After all, it's hardly a state secret that people occasionally take cocaine in the club.
On the contrary, it's world famous for it. If Osama bin Laden sent a suspicious-looking envelope full of white powder to 45 Dean Street it would be up someone's nose in 30 seconds. The incident in question occurred five years ago and Hirst and Allen have never made any bones about their love of illegal substances.
Indeed, Hirst talks openly about his cocaine-fuelled nights at the Groucho in On the Way to Work, a recently published collection of interviews with the artist. Far from damaging their reputations, I would have done Hirst and Allen far more harm if I'd revealed that they were clean-living family men.
However, I didn't reckon on Matthew Freud, the PR guru who made a successful takeover bid for the club earlier this year. According to a source at the club, Matthew was absolutely determined to throw me out and no one was prepared to stand up to him. His unforgiving attitude may be because he was arrested for possession of cocaine when he was 17 and wants to send a message to his business partners that he's now squeaky clean.
His PR company, Freuds, numbers several big American corporations among its clients and Matthew may have wanted to reassure them that he's not going to be soft on drugs in his newly acquired club. Another possibility is that he's settling an old score. I've taken a number of pot shots at the oily PR man over the years, including a very irreverent piece about his recent wedding to Rupert Murdoch's daughter.
I once had the pleasure of attending a society wedding with Freud and wrote about how he'd swapped place settings with another young man so he could sit next to Helena Bonham Carter. The groom's mother, who'd specifically requested to sit next to him, was outraged, but it was all water off the duck's back to the diminutive social climber.
Whatever the explanation, Freud's response to my book has come as a shock to the club's previous owners. Apparently, they think he's completely overreacted. 'He should have just ignored the whole thing,' one confided to me last week. 'Under the old regime no one would have given a damn.'
So is this the end of louche behaviour at the media's favourite watering hole? I very much doubt it. Matthew Freud's a little like Claude Rains in Casablanca announcing that he was shocked - shocked! - to discover that there was gambling going on in Humphrey Bogart's club. Now that all the usual suspects have been rounded up - that is, me - it will be business as usual in the Groucho Club loos.
There's an enormous amount of hypocrisy in the media about drug use. Last week, Scotland Yard announced a crackdown on middle-class cocaine users and, as the only journalist willing to talk openly about it, I've been fending off interview requests from radio and television stations ever since.
On Friday I appeared on the BBC to discuss the latest Home Office statistics about cocaine-related deaths and almost gave the producer a heart attack when, just before going on, I revealed that I'd brought along my forensic testing kit. Would she object if I gave the lavatory a quick going over? She giggled nervously when I told her I was only joking.
Whenever I appear on one of these live programmes the presenters nearly always try to ambush me by asking whether I'm still a cocaine user. They assume their sternest expressions, ready to frown with displeasure as soon as I confess. I usually mumble something about taking it 'occasionally' at parties, but the next time I'm asked this question I'm going to pause for a few seconds and then say, 'Why? Have you got any?' That should shut them up.
Let's face it, I'm not the only one getting up to mischief. The Evening Standard conducted an investigation into drug use in the capital's top night spots recently and discovered that, in the words of the poem by Murray Lachlan Young, 'Simply everyone's taking cocaine'. Forensic testing in London's smartest establishments revealed that nose candy was being inhaled in the Savoy, the Ritz and the Royal Opera House. No wonder Britannia's cool again.
The entire country's blanketed in a blizzard of white powder. I suppose I shouldn't be too blasé about the long-term effects of cocaine. The day after the Vanity Fair photo shoot, I awoke at noon to discover that half my face was paralysed. Could it be related to the vast quantities of Bolivian marching powder I'd consumed the night before?
This was no ordinary case of 'showbiz flu'. I took myself off to the local Accident and Emergency Department where I was told by a doctor that I was suffering from a harmless condition know as Bell's Palsy. It would clear up in a matter of days. 'Are you sure it's not related to cocaine?' I asked, anxiously. 'Why?' he replied. 'Have you got any?'
· Toby Young's account of the five years he spent in New York, 'How to Lose Friends & Alienate People', has just been published by Little, Brown.
