Toby Young

Last Sunday, the Observer published a hostile article about the free school being set up in Wandsworth by Katharine Birbalsingh, whom it described as the ‘Tories’ favourite teacher’. As readers may recall, Katharine lost her job as deputy head of the St Michael and All Angels Academy in Camberwell after criticising Labour’s record on education at the 2010 Tory party conference. She’s now embroiled in a bitter fight with the SWP, NUT and Anti-Academies Alliance, all of whom are campaigning against her new free school. In fairness to the author of the piece — Observer policy editor Daniel Boffey — he probably wasn’t aware that he was trafficking in lies put about by the hard left.

On Saturday 7 February my wife and I finally succumbed to the combined pester power of our four children and bought a hamster. They’ve been nagging us for over a year to buy them a pet and this seemed like the least hassle. We opted for a six-week-old ­Syrian with reddish-brown fur and white patches. We decided to call her Roxy on account of her being so pretty. It’s short for Roxana, the Bactrian princess that Alexander the Great fell in love with. I quickly realised that hamsters are a bit like printers, in that you think you’ve got a bargain until you realise what the running costs are. Roxy herself was only £10, but the cage set me back £65 and her food is so expensive that I’d be better off ­taking her to the Savoy Grill every day.

Since turning 48 last October I’ve begun to obsess about getting old. In 21 months I’ll be 50 and by any definition that’s middle aged. For a man, turning 50 is a bit like turning 40 for a woman. It’s an unwelcome milestone. Adjustments have to be made, humiliations prepared for. One form this obsession takes is incessantly monitoring myself for signs of ageing. For instance, there are the multiplying symptoms of early onset Alzheimer’s — or, as I prefer to think of them, ‘senior moments’. Sometimes these are quite endearing, such as when I find myself making two cups of tea even though I’m the only person in the house. But most of the time they’re distressing, like leaving the oven on all night.

One of the most depressing things about being a journalist is that 99 per cent of your work goes unnoticed. You pour your heart and soul into a piece, congratulate yourself on having produced something rather good for once, then wait for the plaudits to start rolling in. Six months later, you’re still waiting. It’s like dropping a stone into a well and not even having the satisfaction of hearing it go plop. Except it’s not a stone — it’s your whole career. Occasionally, though, something you write attracts attention, and it’s often completely random. For instance, I wrote a column for this magazine last year that is still the subject of intense debate ten months later.

For me, the end of one year and the beginning of the next is a time of mixed feelings. I always take stock, looking back to see what I’ve accomplished in the year gone by, and on that score I have much to celebrate. The West London Free School opened in September, the culmination of two years’ work, and has proved to be a success. Children, parents and staff are happy and we’ve had over 1,000 applicants for our next 120 places. Much of 2012 will be taken up with laying the groundwork for our lower school and sixth form, both of which we hope to open in 2013. But there’s also the inevitable sense of wistfulness.

At around this time of year Caroline and I always have the same argument. I’m not talking about who’s going to be ‘tree elf’ on Christmas Day — a humiliation that involves picking up all the discarded paper after Caroline’s four siblings and their children have unwrapped all their presents. I’ve been ‘tree elf’ for the past five years and I’m resigned to wearing the silly green hat well into my nineties. No, the argument is about what Christmas decorations to display on the outside of our house. According to her, only two things are acceptable: white fairy lights draped over some greenery and an all-natural wreath hung on the front door. Anything more showy is beyond the pale. My sensibilities aren’t quite so refined.

Much merriment was to be had earlier this week reading the Guardian’s report of its four-month investigation into the causes of the August riots. Apparently, the police were the main culprits, in spite of the fact that they were conspicuous by their absence. This feat of logic was summed up in the Daily Mash parody of the Guardian’s report: ‘Riots caused by police when they finally turned up.’ Little alteration was necessary to transform the material into parody. Many of the rioters complained about being stopped and searched — ‘They cut my bredrin’s hand open with a cuff’ — and offered that up as an excuse for their criminal behaviour.

At the time of writing, it looks very much as if the West London Free School won’t be affected by Wednesday’s strike. Critics of free schools have come up with a number of theories as to why this is. We’ve been accused of only hiring non-unionised teachers, which would have been some feat of telepathy given that it’s against the law to ask prospective employees whether they’re union members. Others have suggested we’ve included a clause in all the teachers’ contracts forbidding them to strike on pain of dismissal. That, too, would be illegal. The truth is far simpler.

Watching Steve Coogan giving his testimony to the Leveson inquiry on Sky News, I was intrigued by his argument that, unlike some, he’s never entered into a ‘Faustian pact’ with the press. The implication is that those who have, like Katie Price, are fair game. Not an argument for a universal right to privacy, then, but a qualified right that would only apply to celebrities that shun the limelight. The obvious objection to this is that either everyone should be entitled to a right to privacy or no one should. It cannot be contingent on not returning phone calls from the Daily Mail’s showbiz desk. But, actually, I think Coogan may be on to something here. It’s not that the right to privacy isn’t universal.

The fact that the request came in late on a Thursday afternoon should have aroused my suspicions. ‘Are you available?’ she asked. This was a BBC producer asking me if I was free to appear on Any Questions the following day. I quickly ran through my commitments: pick up Caroline’s dry-cleaning, fix the lavatory seat in the upstairs loo, take Ludo to the doctor. ‘Of course I’m available,’ I said. It wasn’t until I was introduced by Jonathan Dimbleby that I realised why they’d called me so late. ‘Toby Young has heroically stepped into the breach after Kelvin Mackenzie dropped out,’ he said. It didn’t take long to realise why Kelvin had done a reverse ferret.

I knew I shouldn’t have gone to the Economist’s end-of-summer party last month. Within seconds of arriving, I was buttonholed by Venetia Butterfield, publishing director of Viking. Two years ago I signed a contract with Viking to write a book about class and education, but I got sidetracked by the West London Free School. The due date came and went and I’ve been dodging Venetia ever since. ‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten about the book you owe me,’ she said, jabbing me in the chest. ‘But I’ve thought of a way you can make amends. Penguin are publishing a series of short e-books this Christmas and I wondered if you’d like to do one on how to set up a free school?

The period that stretches from Halloween to Guy Fawkes Night has got to be the worst week of the year if you’re a parent of young children. At the time of writing, I’ve managed to get through one and have one to go. I vaguely recall attending a few Halloween parties as a youth, but the custom of going door-to-door, threatening innocent householders with a ‘trick’ unless you’re given a ‘treat’, is entirely alien to these shores. Like other ‘traditional festivals’ that my children demand to take part in — Mother’s Day, the school prom — it is an unwelcome American import. But that’s the least of it.

I’ve finally arrived. No, I’m not talking about being in Who’s Who or going on Desert Island Discs. I’m talking about a stalker. Okay, ‘stalker’ is a slight exaggeration. The woman in question hasn’t actually started going through my bins. She’s more of a cyber-stalker. For the past week or so, she’s sent me a message on Twitter roughly once an hour and, oh boy, are they abusive. I’m a ‘racist’, apparently, not to mention a ‘meeja tart’, a ‘half-rate novelist’ and ‘a joke’. And that’s just the stuff I can repeat in public. The extraordinary thing is, she writes for the Guardian and the New Statesman.

On Sunday I went to the Cheltenham Literary Festival to bang the drum for free schools. I was expecting a warm reception. The local MP is a Lib Dem, but the county council is Conservative. This wouldn’t be like my trip to Manchester last month. Almost as soon as I stepped off the train I was recognised by an anti-government protestor who greeted me with a cry of ‘Fuck off back to London you Tory tosser.’ The first event was a discussion chaired by Marcus Brigstocke in which Natalie Haynes, Shazia Mirza and I had been asked to read three books we wouldn’t normally read. Natalie chose Who Moved My Cheese? and Shazia selected The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and they were both very funny about them.

Caroline went away last Friday, leaving me alone with our four children for the weekend. Given that they’re aged eight and under, and I’d never been in sole charge before, it was something of a test. Could I cope? I hadn’t realised quite how regimented my children’s weekends are until I sat down and digested the three pages of instructions Caroline had left. Saturday mornings, for instance, are parcelled out into 30-minute slots, with tennis lessons, karate lessons and God knows what else. If I was late for one appointment it would create a domino effect, throwing the whole schedule out of whack. There was no room for error. Friday, by contrast, should have been a doddle.

I’m writing this from the Conservative party conference in Manchester and I must say it’s nice to be among friends. I mean the drunken hacks at the bar, obviously. This is a conference where we can drink with impunity because, let’s face it, there isn’t much for us to write about. The big story at all the party conferences is ‘splits’ and the reason both this conference and the Lib Dem conference have been so dull is because the split is between the two parties, not within them. This is one of the ancillary benefits of the coalition: the poles around which the government’s internal politics revolve are located in a safe place, quite unlike the previous administration.

I wouldn’t normally take my wife and children to Dumfries and Galloway for the weekend, given the distance and the expense, but the organisers of the Wigtown Literary Festival offered to pay all our rail fares and put us up for the weekend. Wigtown was designated Scotland’s national book town by the Scottish Parliament in 1999 in an effort to breathe new life into it. At the time, it had one of the highest unemployment levels in Scotland following the closure of its two main employers, the creamery and the distillery. The literary festival has taken place ever since. Almost the moment we crossed the border, a drunk buttonholed my wife. ‘You’re boo-ti-full,’ he said, as we sat on the train from Carlisle to Dumfries.

As winter approaches, with snow forecast for next month, I’m anticipating a massive row with my wife. The problem is that Caroline refuses to switch the central heating on before the first day of winter, which falls on 22 December. It doesn’t matter if temperatures plummet to below zero in the interim. ‘Put on an extra jumper,’ is her standard response. As far as she’s concerned, anyone who turns the central heating on before winter has officially arrived is a big girl’s blouse. I sometimes wonder if this is the legacy of having gone to Cheltenham Ladies’ College. As Evelyn Waugh pointed out, anyone who has been to a British public school has no difficulty coping with privations in later life, including prison.