The original title Bright Young Things, which Waugh changed because he thought the phrase had become too clichéd, was used in Stephen Fry's 2003 film adaptation.

The eventual title appears in a comment made by the novel's narrator in reference to the characters' party-driven lifestyle: "All that succession and repetition of massed humanity... Those vile bodies...".

Returning from France, his manuscript is impounded as obscene by customs officers, while in the next room his friend Agatha Runcible is strip searched as a suspected jewel thief.

After a fancy dress party, where he meets up with Nina and Agatha, the young people go back to the home of a quiet girl who turns out to be the Prime Minister's daughter.

Simon's job is offered to Adam, who initially devotes much of his column to the exploits of his friends but finds he can only broaden the scope by invention.

The nuptial pair fly off to France for their honeymoon, but Ginger is unable to join Nina for Christmas at the house of her father, who he has not yet met.

Heavily influenced by the cinema and by the disjointed style of T. S. Eliot, Vile Bodies is Waugh's most ostentatiously "modern" novel.

[9] A film adaptation, titled Bright Young Things, was released in 2003, written and directed by Stephen Fry.