Toby Young

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Toby Young in London, 2004.

Toby Daniel Moorsom Young (born 17th October 1963) is a British journalist and the author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, the tale of his failed five-year attempt to make it in the USA as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine; and The Sound of No Hands Clapping, a follow-up about his failure to make it as a Hollywood screenwriter. His obnoxious wit has earned him almost as many enemies as admirers and the title of "England's heterosexual Truman Capote".[1] A former restaurant critic for the Evening Standard, Young has served as a judge for the television show Top Chef.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and career

Toby Young's father was Michael Young, a Labour life peer[2] and pioneering sociologist who introduced the term "meritocracy". His mother was the novelist, sculptor and painter Sasha Moorsom.[2] He was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford[2] (gaining a first in PPE), as well as Harvard and Trinity College, Cambridge. At Oxford he started a magazine named The Danube, discovering his interest in journalism.[3] After leaving Oxford in 1986 he joined The Times but was later fired.[4] He then left for Harvard as a Fulbright scholar[2] where he worked as a teaching fellow in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and became a devoted reader of Spy, the satirical magazine co-edited by Graydon Carter. He returned to the UK in 1988 and worked as a teaching assistant at Cambridge in the Social and Political Sciences Faculty until 1990.

In 1991, Young founded and edited the Modern Review[2] with Julie Burchill and her then husband Cosmo Landesman. Its motto was "low culture for highbrows". In 1995, with the magazine close to financial ruin, Young closed it down, angering his principal financial backer Peter York.[5] This decision led to a fierce public battle with Burchill and her then lover, Charlotte Raven, a writer at the magazine.[5]

[edit] Vanity Fair and other affiliations

Young moved to New York City shortly afterward to work for Carter at Vanity Fair,[2] resulting in what a Los Angeles Times article called "an undistinguished six-month stint at the magazine".[6] In fact, he was under contract at the magazine for the best part of three years. Patrician colleagues at the magazine were taken aback by his brash unashamedly pushy manner. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People describes his attempts to 'take' Manhattan and chronicles his many faux-pas, such as hiring a strippergram to come to Vanity Fair's offices on Take Our Daughters to Work Day.[2] He has boasted of his "negative charisma" and his appearance has been likened to a "peeled quail's egg dipped in celery salt" (Private Eye).

After his final Vanity Fair contract expired and was not renewed in 1998,[6] 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. 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?.[7][8] It was named Best New Comedy at the 2005 Theatregoers' Choice Awards.[9]

From 2002-7, he wrote a weekly restaurant column for The Evening Standard and Young also competed in the Channel 4 TV series Come Dine With Me, which he won, appeared as one of the panel of food critics comprising the eponymous 'enemy' in the 2008 BBC Two series Eating with the Enemy and served as a judge on Hell's Kitchen.[10] He currently writes a restaurant column for the Independent on Sunday.

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 plays Young, who co-produced the film.[11] The film was released in Britain on October 3, 2008 and reached the number one spot at the box office in its opening week. Young is currently co-producing a feature-length dramadoc for Channel 4 about Boris Johnson and David Cameron.

On November 12, 2008, TV Guide reported that Young would shortly join the judge's table of Bravo's Top Chef. [12] He served as a regular judge on season five, alternating with Gail Simmons, and will serve as a regular judge on season six, debuting on August 19, 2009.[13]

[edit] Personal

Young is married to Caroline Bondy, with whom he has four children.[14] Young said the couple met in Manhattan 1997 when the 23-year-old[14] Bondy, the "little sister of an ex-girlfriend",[15] had obtained a job at a law firm and needed a place to stay. Young took her in, and the two "were living together within a week".[15] They became engaged in April 2000.[14]

[edit] Quotes

Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair editor: "Those who can't teach, write. Those who can't write, write about themselves —-- in Toby's case, endlessly".[6]

Toby Young: "I thought that was a bit rich coming from him. Back when I worked for Vanity Fair in the mid-90s, I remember being perplexed by this woman wafting around the office with an air of great self-importance. I eventually asked another member of staff what she did and it turned out she wrote Graydon's 'Letter from the Editor' at the front of the magazine each month. So a more accurate rendering of that aphorism would be, 'Those who can't teach, write. Those who can't write employ someone to write for them and then pass it off as their own work.'"[16]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Journalism

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Jonathan Frey "Pegg to Lose Friends", Joblo website citing Variety magazine. Retrieved on 23 June 2007.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g "The master of foot-in-mouth syndrome - Toby Young interview", by Alice Wyllie, The Scotsman, 03 October 2008
  3. ^ Alberto Amendariz, "A Worm in the Big Apple: British Bad Boy Toby Young Takes on Vanity Fair", New York Review of Magazines, Spring 2002. (Columbia University School of Journalism website) Retrieved on 23 June 2007.
  4. ^ Toby Young "Opinion: Toby Young on failure", The Guardian, 30 September 2006. Retrieved on 23 June 2007.
  5. ^ a b Lynn Barber "Forever Young", The Observer, 3 September 2006. Retrieved on 23 June 2007.
  6. ^ a b c "Misbehaving works out for Toby Young", by Chris Lee, Los Angeles Times, September 28, 2008
  7. ^ Sarah Lyall "A very British 'documentary farce'", International Herald Tribune, 25 August 2005 reprinting a New York Times article. Retrieved on 23 June 2007.
  8. ^ Full Text of Who's the Daddy?
  9. ^ "Toby Young". BBC News. Friday, 8 September 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/review/panel/5327292.stm. Retrieved on 2008-10-22. 
  10. ^ "Archive of Toby Young's Restaurant Reviews", "The Evening Standard".
  11. ^ "Simon Pegg is Toby Young in How to Lose Friends adaptation", Empire, 14 August 2006. Retrieved on 23 June 2007.
  12. ^ What's Cooking with Season 5 of Top Chef?" TV Guide. November 12, 2008. Retrieved on November 12, 2008.
  13. ^ "Top Chef Season 6", Bravo TV. Retrieved on 14 July 2009.
  14. ^ a b c "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People: living with Toby Young", by Caroline Bondy, The Times, September 30, 2008
  15. ^ a b "From lad to dad" by Toby Young, Evening Standard via ThisIsLondon.co.uk, July 31, 2003
  16. ^ "Guest Interview" Have I Got News For You Retrieved on 2 April 2009.

[edit] References

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