This is a peculiar, mannered, compelling book. I read it end to end in two long sittings, at a somewhat deliberate pace. It made me feel at once like I was trawling through a middlebrow celebrity lifestyle omnibus of something like Heat magazine, whilst retaining an undeserved sense of self-regard about embarking on something rather more intellectually valuable than such. Compulsively digesting every page, enjoying the callbacks and repeated themes, never really with a firm grasp on where we were heading next or what I was learning. Enjoyably provocative.. ( )

101 one-on-one meetings, each described in 1001 words, forming a celebrity daisy chain spanning about 150 years. It’s such a great idea for a book, and Brown with his parodist’s eye for human follies and foibles is in his element documenting the outlandish interactions, my favorite of which is definitely Bernard Shaw crashing his bicycle into Bertrand Russell. The tone is archly amiable and Brown is almost always sympathetic to his oddball subjects, although Sinatra and Hemingway get what you suspect they both deserved. T.S. Eliot and Groucho Marx are longtime penpals. Andy Warhol has a grudge against Nancy Reagan. You get the idea. You’ll get more or less out of these depending on your personal preference, and I’m sure there are more than a few shaggy dog stories here although Brown does list his sources at the back.

My only complaint, and you know it’s real when I’m complaining about this, is the lack of diversity among the 101 dramatis personae. By my count, 40 are from the world of entertainment, 31 from arts and letters, 25 from politics and society. Understandable I suppose that such types tend to make for better stories than scientists and athletes and businesspeople, but it starts to feel samey quite early on. What’s less forgivable are the gender — 82 men, 19 women — and color — all except Michael Jackson are white — balances. ( )

101 chance meetings, juxtaposing the famous and the infamous, the artistic and the philistine, the pompous and the comical, the snobbish and the vulgar, each 1,001 words long, and with a time span stretching from the 19th century to the 21st.
Life is made up of individuals meeting one another. They speak, or don’t speak. They get on, or don’t get on. They make agreements, which they either hold to or ignore. They laugh, they cry, they are excited, they are indifferent, they share secrets, they say, “How do you do?” Often it is the most fleeting of meetings that, in the fullness of time, turn out to be the most noteworthy.
‘One on One’ examines the curious nature of different types of meeting, from the oddity of encounters with the Royal Family (who start giggling during a recital by TS Eliot) to those often perilous meetings between old and young (Mark Twain terrifying Rudyard Kipling) and between young and old (the 23-year-old Sarah Miles having her leg squeezed by the nonagenarian Bertrand Russell), to contemporary random encounters (George Galloway meeting Michael Barrymore on Celebrity Big Brother). Ingenious in its construction, witty in its narration, panoramic in its breadth, ‘One on One’ is a wholly original book.

One on One is a very interesting read about the meetings between famous people throughout history (well, mostly 20th-century), creating a chain starting with an up-and-coming politician named Adolf Hitler and ending, 101 entertaining encounters later, back with Hitler again. Sometimes the linkages are surprising, sometimes they are contrived (it is remarkable how so many famous people use their pull just to meet other famous people). Sometimes sparks fly, and one paragraph on page 79 borders on the absurd: a fight between Eli Wallach (Tuco from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) and the Deputy Leader of the British Labour Party is broken up by the director of The Guns of Navarone.

But although Craig Brown's book made me laugh a few times, and never becomes boring or same-y, the main impression I will take from it is just how conceited, vain, priggish or just plain unpleasant many famous people are. Some seem nice (the chain from Rudyard Kipling to Mark Twain to Helen Keller to Martha Graham to Madonna is one big love-in) but many (Noël Coward, Lord Snowdon, P. L. Travers, Nancy Reagan, Andy Warhol, Frank Sinatra – especially Frank Sinatra – to name but a few) now seem to me like the kind of people I would cross the street to avoid. That Hitler bloke, in his two appearances, comes across as an amiable chap though.

All told, the book was an enjoyable and breezy experience; I read through it in just a couple of days and never tired of doing so. Brown, despite occasionally shining a light on some of the more disagreeable personalities of famous people, never quite descends to muck-raking and consequently keeps the reader onside. Brown's fixation with the number 101 seems a bit unnecessary and excessive (at the end of the book, he notes: I have described each of the 101 meetings in exactly 1001 words, which makes One on One 101,101 words long. The acknowledgements, prefacing quotes, author's blurb, book's blurb and list of my other books each consist of 101 words…") but I perhaps shouldn't be too critical here. For it is no coincidence that I decided to read this on 1st January: 01/01." ( )

Interesting way to present anecdotes. ( )