Toby Young
| Toby Young | |
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 Toby Young with pupils at the West London Free School, 2011. |
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| Born | Toby Daniel Moorsom Young 17 October 1963 Buckinghamshire, England, United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Journalist |
Toby Daniel Moorsom Young[1] FRSA (17 October 1963) is an English journalist. He is best known as the author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, the tale of his stint in New York as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine. Young served as a judge in seasons five and six of the television show Top Chef[2] and is the co-founder of the West London Free School.
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Biography[edit]
Young was born in Buckinghamshire and brought up in Highgate, North London, and South Devon. His mother was the BBC Radio producer, artist and writer Sasha Moorsom[3] and his father was Michael Young, the Labour life peer and pioneering sociologist who coined the word "meritocracy".[4]
Education[edit]
Young was educated at Creighton School (now Fortismere School), Muswell Hill and King Edward VI Community College, Totnes. He left school at 16 with one Grade C GCE O-Level in English Literature and did menial jobs under a government Workfare programme. He then retook his O-Levels and went to the Sixth Form of William Ellis School, Highgate, where he got two Bs and a C at A-level and managed to obtain a place at Brasenose College, Oxford after he was sent an acceptance letter by mistake.[5] He was awarded a First in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and, after a six-month period as a News Trainee at The Times, went to Harvard University as a Fulbright scholar, where he worked as a teaching fellow in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. This was followed by a two-year stint at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he worked as a teaching assistant in the Social and Political Sciences Faculty and carried out research for a doctorate which he didn't complete.[6] He is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Buckingham.
Career[edit]
In 1991, he co-founded and co-edited the Modern Review with Julie Burchill and her then husband Cosmo Landesman. Its motto was "Low culture for highbrows". In 1995 the magazine was close to financial ruin and Young closed it down, angering his principal financial backer Peter York.[7] This decision led to a fierce public battle with Burchill and staff writer Charlotte Raven.[7]
Young moved to New York City shortly afterward to work for Vanity Fair.[8] After being sacked by Vanity Fair in 1998, Young remained in New York for a further two years, working as a columnist at New York Press. He returned to the UK in 2000 and is currently an associate editor of The Spectator, where he writes a weekly column, a feature writer for The Sun on Sunday and a blogger for The Daily Telegraph. His blog was long listed for the 2012 George Orwell Prize for blogging.[9]
He has performed in the West End in a stage adaptation of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and, in 2005, co-wrote (with fellow Spectator journalist Lloyd Evans) a sex farce about the David Blunkett/Kimberley Quinn scandal and the "Sextator" affairs of Boris Johnson and Rod Liddle called Who's the Daddy?.[10] It was named Best New Comedy at the 2006 Theatregoers' Choice Awards.[11]
From 2002 to 2007, Young wrote a restaurant column for The Evening Standard and, following that, a restaurant column for The Independent on Sunday. In addition to serving as a judge on Top Chef, Young has competed in the Channel 4 TV series Come Dine With Me, appeared as one of the panel of food critics in the 2008 BBC Two series Eating with the Enemy and served as a judge on Hell's Kitchen.[12]
British producer Stephen Woolley and his wife Elizabeth Karlsen produced the film adaptation How to Lose Friends & Alienate People in conjunction with FilmFour. Simon Pegg played Young, who co-produced the film.[13] The film was released in Britain on 3 October 2008 and reached the number one spot at the box office in its opening week.[14][15]
Young co-produced and co-wrote When Boris Met Dave, a drama-documentary for Channel 4 about the relationship between Eton and Oxford University contemporaries Mayor of London Boris Johnson and current Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister David Cameron, which aired on More4 on 7 October 2009.[16]
In addition to How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Young is the author of The Sound of No Hands Clapping (2006) and How to Set Up a Free School (2011). He is currently writing a book for Viking about education.
Young is the lead proposer and co-founder of the West London Free School, the first free school in Britain to sign a Funding Agreement with the Secretary of State for Education, and now serves as the chair of the charitable trust that established the school.[17][18] The trust is opening a primary school in Hammersmith in September and has been approved by the Department for Education to open a second primary in Earls Court in 2014.
Personal life[edit]
Young is married to Caroline Bondy with whom he has four children.
References[edit]
- ^ Toby Young Authorised Biography – Debrett’s People of Today, Toby Young Profile
- ^ "What's Cooking with Season 5 of Top Chef?" TV Guide. 12 November 2008. Retrieved on 12 November 2008.
- ^ "Sasha Moorsom: 1931-1993", The Guardian, 1993. Retrieved on 20 May 2010.
- ^ "Comment: Down with meritocracy", The Guardian, 29 June 2001. Retrieved on 14 February 2010.
- ^ The Sunday Times Money p.8 Anna Mikhailova interview 7 April 2013
- ^ "Can Toby Young's free school succeed?" The Guardian, 5 April 2011. Retrieved on 5 March 2012
- ^ a b Lynn Barber "Forever Young", The Observer, 3 September 2006. Retrieved on 23 June 2007.
- ^ "The master of foot-in-mouth syndrome - Toby Young interview", by Alice Wyllie, The Scotsman, 3 October 2008
- ^ "Telegraph Blogs: Toby Young", The Orwell Prize.
- ^ Sarah Lyall "A very British 'documentary farce'", International Herald Tribune, 25 August 2005 reprinting a New York Times article. Retrieved on 23 June 2007.
- ^ "Toby Young". BBC News. Friday, 8 September 2006. Retrieved 2008-10-22.
- ^ "Archive of Toby Young's Restaurant Reviews", "The Evening Standard".
- ^ "Simon Pegg is Toby Young in How to Lose Friends adaptation", Empire, 14 August 2006. Retrieved on 23 June 2007.
- ^ "UK Box Office: 3-5 October 2008" , BFI. Retrieved on 14 February 2010.
- ^ "Ricky Gervais's clout at the UK box office is no lie", The Guardian, 6 October 2009. Retrieved on 14 February 2010.
- ^ "Last Night's TV", The Times, 8 October 2009. Retrieved on 20 May 2010.
- ^ "Toby Young's battle to set up a new school", BBC2, 8 December 2009. Retrieved on 18 May 2010.
- ^ "Free Schools: Toby Young's is first to get go ahead"
External reviews[edit]
- Toby Young Official site
- Toby Young at the Internet Movie Database
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