Brits only take Manhattan if they go native

Harry Mount says that Britishness doesn't get you very far in New York: if you want to be a player you can't afford to behave like a self-deprecating gentleman amateur Sometimes during my stint as the Daily Telegraph correspondent in New York last year, I'd get invited to appear on Fox News, Rupert Murdoch's 24-hour rolling news programme. Oh, the waves of smugness as Don the researcher covered me with praise and asked me to broadcast to the most powerful nation on earth. 'I loved your article about Prince Charles coming to New York/the British guy who allegedly murdered his wife and baby in Boston/anything with an obviously British angle,' Don would say, credibly. 'We'd love it if you appeared on the Bill O'Reilly show.'

'Well, I'll see if I can find time,' I'd say, stalling for a few seconds as I pretended to look at my diary. 'Yup. It looks like I should be able to do it.'

One week, after an appearance on O'Reilly — a leading conservative TV pundit loathed and loved in equal measure in America — Don called again.

'You know the article you wrote today?'

'Yes, Don,' I said, reaching for the imaginary diary.

'Well, the first seven paragraphs were a complete plagiarisation of today's article on the Fox News website,' said Don, all warmth gone from that old voice I'd loved so much, 'And the eighth was incorrect.'

He was quite right Much of the job of the foreign correspondent — or this one, anyway — is to copy out the papers of the country he's reporting from. And that's pretty much what I'd done, changing the word order here and there. This is completely standard practice, by the way. As long as you credit the source, which I'd failed to do.

'Oh, I'm really sorry, Don.'

'We want an apology in tomorrow's paper.' 'We don't do apologies.'

'Then give me your editor's email address. I want to make an official complaint.'

I'm not just telling this story to show how willing I am to tell stories against myself or how often I got invited to appear on telly, but also to show the enormous gulf between the Americans and the British, or more precisely between New York and London.

In London, a television researcher trying to get a hack on to a news programme would never lay it on so thick; print journalists do not need to be persuaded on to the air to reach a bigger audience. And, if a London researcher had to tell off the same hack for copying or whatever, he would take the edge off the criticism by saying it didn't matter really, it was his boss's fault, or that he was only doing his job.

There's been a lot of this sort of comparing of New York and London going on recently, particularly now that the dollar-pound exchange rate has hit an even two to one. They're selling so much Kendal Mint Cake in Greenwich Village that they want to call the place Little Britain . . . you can't walk into a Conde Nast office without hearing vowels that remain unclipped etc.

This is all true. Lots of successful people from one big city have indeed gone to work in another big city where successful people like to work. But ultimately the British impact on New York is minimal Yes, you get Tina Browns and Anna Wmtours — and their embryonic versions — all over Manhattan. But they really succeed only by being American in outlook. By being immensely hard-working, power-dressed and businesslike. Despite what everyone says about Americans and our accent, Britishness doesn't get you very far in New York.

Whatever you might think of as distinctly British attributes — satire, self-mockery, irony, take your pick — are already catered for by geniuses like Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, Lany David of Curb Your Enthusiasm, or the endless cast list of American greatest hits from the past. Think Woody Allen, John Belushi, Laurel and Hardy . . .

And whatever you might think of as British vices — laziness disguised as diffidence, drunkenness disguised as unconventionality, rudeness disguised as honesty — don't go down at all well in New York.

The Englishman who wants to get on in New York must behave like a New Yorker, not like Hugh Grant The latest addition to the British Hack Pack, Joanna Coles, the new editor of American Marie Claire, understands this.

Formerly the Times correspondent in New York, Coles has been racing up the American journalism ladder, hand over hand, ever since she left the Times in 2001. She leapt from features editor of New York magazine to editing More — the American publication for 40-plus women — within a couple of years. But still she couldn't make it to the top rung.

Cue an interview with Cathy Black, the president of Hearst (as in William Randolph) Magazines last year. Coles was due to profile Miss Black for More, but Miss Black had to cancel because she had a sudden plane trip to make from JFK Airport.

That's fine, said Miss Coles, we'll do the interview in the cab to the airport In the 45minute ride to JFK, somewhere along the unlovely Van Wyck Expressway that runs through Queens, Miss Coles failed to do the profile; but she did manage to win the job of editor of Marie Claire after less than an hour's worth of chutzpah and charm.

To compare New York with London is to compare Miss Coles with, say, Jeffrey Bernard: hard, utterly ruthless and admirable ambition up against the debonair self-mocking of the professional amateur.

Miss Coles is so American in her outlook — less coals to Newcastle than Coles to Manhattan — that her arrival on the scene, like Tina Brown's or Anna Wintoues, does nothing to make New York any more British.

The same goes for Kendal Mint Cake on Greenwich Avenue or Soho House on Ninth Avenue — they're too English Tourist Board English, too 'Isn't it funny that we're here', to have any real effect on American life. They're about as influential as the Texas Embassy Cantina knocking out tequila and Tex-Mex food on the corner of Trafalgar Square. Only when Americans start selling Kendal Mint Cake in the Kenny Rogers-themed roadside service stations of Nebraska will Britain really have crossed the Atlantic.

Until then, there's no point in making the comparison. These cities, like their professionals, are just too different: one, 2,000 years old, spreading across 625 square miles of a tiny island; the other, less than 400 years old, the centre of which is a tiny 20 square-mile island off the biggest land mass in the world.

Fatuous as it sounds to state the bleeding obvious, New York and London are very good at doing different things because they are so different. The moment they try to imitate each other is the moment they fail.

It would be bloody stupid to go to New York for, say, its green spaces — Central Park is only extraordinary because it is the only proper park on Manhattan and even then it is only 843 acres. Richmond Park alone is 2,500 acres.

You'd be pretty stupid too to go to New York to look at pre-19th century architecture, to drink heavily and be appreciated for it, or to expect any praise for heroic failure.

And it would be just as silly to go to London to make your name as a dog therapist, admit openly to being ambitious, or make a large circle of friends as a transsexual.

Go to New York and do all these New York things, particularly if you've got New Yorky qualities. Ditto London. But don't go thinking that by being all Londony you can take Manhattan.

Hany Mount writes for the Daily Mail.