These days artists like Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and the Chapman brothers are not only big business but also , quite simply, celebrities. But they rose from obscurity back in the eighties and nineties in a then-semi-derelict part of east London by visiting upon the art world a set of artworks as outlandish and attention-seeking (not to mention scatological) as their general behaviour. This is the first account of how YBA (Young British Artists) came about, by the group's only 'embedded journalist': an outrageously comic tale of White Cube openings, fights in pubs, vomiting into fountains and, eventually, the breakthrough exhibition Sensation. Throughout, Gregor Muir was there...