Toby Young Quotes

You know when you tell a self-deprecating story at a dinner party, everyone’s laughing along with you? But then when someone else repeats that same story at another dinner party you feel they’re all laughing at you?

I tried being a mechanic and I tried catering, but I realized I had even less aptitude for semi-skilled labour than for academic work.

‘Top Chef’ is a very smooth-running machine. All the people working there are incredibly professional and absolutely at the top of their game.

My life’s ambition is to play a James Bond villain. I have the cat and the eye-patch, so I’m just waiting for the call. For some reason, though, the phone hasn’t rung.

I miss being fawned over by restaurateurs and chefs.

I don’t envy young Brits crossing the Atlantic to make their fortunes today.

The fact that I’m a Tory who hasn’t worked at a university – at least, not since I taught at Cambridge in 1990 – doesn’t disqualify me from serving on the board of the OfS.

I think I’ve been wishing for celebrity for so long that I’ve got used to being someone who’s petitioning the establishment for acceptance… my whole schtick, my whole identity, is so wrapped up in being a petitioner that I don’t really know how to react now that petition has been granted.

I really like the Observer. I think I’d love to have a column with a broad reach that would enable me to do some proper reporting, but keep it on sort of a humorous level. I’ve always had a very happy experience writing for them.

I’ve never been to a shrink. But my parents were very psychologically literate – my father had undergone Freudian analysis – and we often talked about other people in psychological terms, so I picked up a lot of that.

America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.

Everyone said to me growing up, “You’re like an American. You have to go to America. That’s your spiritual home.”

There’s no reason why you can’t deliver a grammar-school curriculum to an all-ability intake.

If anything bad happens, the media will leap on it. We’re under a huge obligation to be successful.

I expect that in 40 years’ time I’ll be writing political tomes and working for an organisation like Oxfam.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a master of anything.

The moment I’m perceived to be even a tiny bit successful, my career will go down the pan.

Top Chef is a very smooth-running machine. All the people working there are incredibly professional and absolutely at the top of their game.

Oddly, I do have a problem with authority. I find it very difficult to knuckle down and follow rules. Which are the classic symptoms of someone who has a troubled relationship with their father. And yet, I never had a problem with my father.

I think that magazines like Vanity Fair are still operating under the old rules, and that if you come to work for a magazine like Vanity Fair, even today, you’re certainly expected to treat people like Peggy Siegal very deferentially.

I’ve become a professional failure – in order to pay the mortgage I have to remain unemployed. Luckily, a disaster always seems to befall me at exactly the right moment.