boo.com founder admits surprise at bankruptcy

It's easy in retrospect to mock boo.com's spectacular fall from grace, but really we want to know the inside story, don't we?

Now's your chance. The company's former CEO Ernst Malmsten has today launched a book charting his rise and fall from part-time poet and literary critic to the e-tail pioneer at the helm of boo.com's famously poor website.

However, many critics have already attacked Malmsten for trying to profit from his spectacular failure. Perhaps predicting this he plays down the reputed excesses of the company, which managed to burn £100m in just 18 months.

He says: "It wasn't caviar or Champagne. We flew Concorde perhaps more than once, but I think that was more a symbol of what the internet was at the time."

Despite the phenomenal burn rate, Malmstem said: "I was quite shocked when the company went bankrupt."