Toby Young

For the past 200 years or so, Englishmen who aren’t faring too well in the home country have had the option of moving to the States. Thanks to their inferiority complex, our American cousins labour under the illusion that we are more intelligent and better educated than them. You only have to deign to notice

‘Few shows of such embarrassing, authorial ineptitude can have hit the London stage since the Blitz.’ That was the verdict of Nicholas de Jongh, the Evening Standard drama critic, on the satirical play about the royal family that Lloyd Evans and I wrote in 2006. It wasn’t the only bad review we got, but it

I can’t afford to send my children to private school — and I’m relishing the cachet This morning I received a letter from Norland Place, a much sought-after private school on Holland Park Avenue, informing me that my son Ludo had been awarded a place in September 2009. There was a time when this would

It’s a boy! This was the news following my wife’s 20-week scan last week. I know it is infra dig to find out the sex of your baby in advance, but Caroline said she needed to be psychologically prepared just in case it was a boy. She wanted another girl, obviously, and she didn’t want

Where is the next generation of Toby Youngs? It’s my turn to dismiss their drivel In 1988, Weidenfeld and Nicolson published a book called The Oxford Myth. Edited by Rachel Johnson and containing essays by a variety of precocious undergraduates, it was the worst reviewed book of the year. ‘A singularly worthless volume,’ wrote Niall

As an angry young man in the 1990s, I used to get extremely irritated when I read articles by left-wing intellectuals in the London Review of Books about football. To my jaundiced eye, it was a feeble attempt to shore up their credentials as men of the people. Back in those days, football was still

As a father of three small children, I find myself constantly baffled by what is known in our household as ‘the boredom paradox’. Why is it that my four-year-old daughter considers a trip to Loftus Road to watch QPR battle against relegation ‘boring’, while her enjoyment of the same six episodes of Numberjacks can never

‘So,’ said the television interviewer, fixing me with an inquisitorial stare, ‘why are you so desperate to be a celebrity?’ This was last week on BBC2, but the question comes up in virtually every television interview I do. I’m beginning to suspect that I’m the only member of the chattering classes foolish enough to admit

In the newspaper business there’s a name for a story that makes your jaw hit the floor and your eyes pop out of your skull: ‘a marmalade dropper’. For instance, the disclosure that HM Revenue and Customs had misplaced the personal records of 25 million people was ‘a marmalade dropper’, as was the revelation that

More bad news for the ‘Hons’. According to a sociological survey funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, class doesn’t necessarily guarantee status. On the contrary, the two are barely even connected in today’s Britain. So the fact that my father was ennobled for, among other things, founding the Economic and Social Research Council

When a person does something to remind you of their superior status, I often wonder whether he or she is fully in control of what they’re doing. Name-droppers, for instance, often seem to be acting compulsively, as if they’re suffering from a mild personality disorder. Once the impulse to drop the name has been triggered

When the letter arrived last April I thought it was a joke. ‘Dear Sir,’ it began. ‘On behalf of the publishers A & C Black, I am very pleased to invite you to compile an entry for the forthcoming edition of Who’s Who . . .’ Was this a cruel prank being perpetrated by the

Actors claim that the hardest thing about their profession is the ever-present possibility of rejection, but they have it easy compared to authors. First we have to find favour with an agent, then a publisher, then an editor, then the critics — on and on it goes. Rejection hangs over us like the Sword of

For the past five years or so, my best friends and I have been getting together for a Christmas lunch. Because I’m a food critic — or was, until recently — they have always left it to me to make the booking on the understanding that I’ll be able to secure a better table than

I cannot remember when I became a wine bore. It could have been when Majestic opened a branch in Shepherd’s Bush — or it might stem from the first time I saw Sideways. Perhaps it is just a sign of growing old, like the realisation that you can no longer get away with wearing Converse.

I experienced what the American self-help guru Dr Phil calls a ‘defining moment’ the other day. I’d just taken stock of my life and, frankly, things didn’t look good. The house I’ve bought in Acton — and which I can’t possibly afford — is already worth less than I paid for it. My wife has

What are the two words guaranteed to fill any parents of young children with terror? School fees? Chicken Pox? Gina Ford? The answer, I’m afraid, is half term. My daughter, Sasha, only started going to ‘big school’ in September so I wasn’t anticipating too many problems. What I hadn’t factored in is that my wife