Toby Young

Next weekend, I am planning to meet up with an old friend in Las Vegas. I have a direct flight booked with Virgin Atlantic, a reservation at the best restaurant in town and, most importantly, two tickets to Crazy Horse Paris at the MGM Grand. But in the past few days I’ve been having second

State of Play, the Hollywood remake of Paul Abbot’s six-part thriller, is bound to be politely reviewed by my colleagues because it portrays journalists in a sympathetic light. Indeed, Russell Crowe, who plays a fearless reporter, constantly reminds his cost-conscious editor of the vital role performed by journalists in the democratic process. Without us, he

‘The thing about Boris is that he really, really wants to be President,’ said an Old Etonian contemporary of his. This was back in 1984 when we were all at Oxford together. ‘Yes, I know,’ I replied. ‘He’s already announced his candidacy.’ ‘I don’t mean President of the Union,’ he said. ‘I mean President of

Armando Iannucci’s satirical movie about New Labour is a tribute to the Iron Lady It is the 30th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election victory on 4 May and, not surprisingly, the tributes have already begun to pour in. Most of these are from the usual suspects, but I was pleased to see that Armando

If April is the cruellest month, it must be because it contains the Easter holidays. At least, it seems that way if you have four young children, expecting to be entertained. I invited my ‘followers’ on Twitter to come up with some suggestions and they weren’t helpful. ‘Why don’t you lend your kids to Nike?’

As I write, tens of thousands of anti-capitalist protesters are converging on the City of London to demonstrate against the G20 summit. Marching under the banner ‘Jobs, Justice and Climate’, this loose coalition of anarchists, environmentalists and revolutionary socialists aims to bring the capital’s financial centre to a standstill. ‘We hope to control large parts

Our reaction to Jade’s death shows that we are ready to elect an Old Etonian as PM What does the death of Jade Goody tell us about the way we live now? For some, the fact that her battle with terminal cancer became such a three-ring media circus will be a cause of despair. Are

I pride myself on being quite a wily old bird, one of those naturally suspicious individuals who is not easily fooled. You have to get up pretty early in the morning… etc, etc. But last week I was stitched up like a kipper and I am £200 poorer as a result. My only excuse is

I can well imagine my children saying to me: ‘This is off the record, Dad’ As a member of the chattering classes, I am riveted by the Julie Myerson story. For those of you who haven’t been following it, Myerson has just published a book called The Lost Child in which she intercuts the story

As a new member of staff at Vanity Fair in 1995, I was given a list of words it was unacceptable to use in the magazine. A few of these reflected the personal idiosyncrasies of the editor — ‘golfer’, for instance — but most were slang terms like ‘flick’, ‘honcho’ and ‘hooker’. The message was clear:

I have taken to sleeping with my grandfather’s cavalry sword under the bed I caught a burglar last week. I was standing in my kitchen at 11 o’clock on Saturday morning when a young man suddenly appeared at the bottom of the garden. At first, I didn’t realise he was a burglar. I strolled outside

One of the paradoxes of social organisations is that the more egalitarian they are on the surface, the more hierarchical they are underneath. Thus, the House of Commons is more class-bound than the House of Lords, the Labour party more rigidly stratified than the Conservatives, and comprehensive schools more cliquey than Eton College. Of nothing

I had quite a sobering lunch this week. It was with Bill Griffin, the former CEO of Kiss FM and now the strategy director of a big London ad agency. The main topic of conversation was the cultural impact of the recession and Barack Obama’s election. Would brands that are closely associated with the boom

I welcome Sir Jonathan Porritt’s advice about population control According to Sir Jonathan Porritt, the government’s green guru, couples who have more than two children are being ‘irresponsible’. ‘I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate,’ he says. He recommends

An unbiased review of the restaurant owned by my new employer at the Standard It is what is known on Fleet Street as a ‘marmalade dropper’ — a story so surprising that the piece of toast you are eating as you read it falls from your hand. No, I am not talking about the news

My heart goes out to the compilers of the 2009 Michelin Guide to Great Britain and Ireland which was published earlier this week. Not since 1929, the first year of the Great Depression, can an edition of the famous red handbook have been looked forward to less. In the current climate, the prospect of going