British writer undone by moral turpitude

Sebastian Horsley, would-be enfant terrible of the Brit-lit scene, has been sent home from New York where he was about to embark on a promotional tour of America for his autobiographical book Dandy of the Underworld. Customs officers at Newark airport detained the 45-year-old author for eight hours on Tuesday, possibly alerted to his persona non grata status by the contents of Horsley's book.

The damning diary recounts his drug-fuelled sexual antics across London's seedy demi-monde. The author leaves no taboo unturned, detailing the £100,000 he spent on crack cocaine, a further hundred grand on a succession of 1,000 prostitutes and his time as a male escort.

His meticulously related misdeeds unfortunately shatter the terms of the visa waiver scheme that allows British citizens to travel freely to the US. Under the terms of the programme, crimes involving "moral turpitude" - drug use, prostitution, that sort of thing - are a strict no-no, so back Horsley was sent to London.

The irony is that very little of the book is probably true, given that Horsley is a self-confessed Walter Mitty. "I don't speak, I quote," he told the Independent last year. "I am a fraud. I have cobbled together my personality from hundreds of little bits."

That phrase might not go down well in American literary circles, being horribly reminiscent of the title of James Frey's memoir, A Million Little Pieces. Frey caused a scandal in American when Oprah Winfrey discovered that the moving story of drug addiction she had helped promote through her book club was mostly made up.