Toby Daniel Moorsom Young (born 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 U.S. 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". As the son of a baron, he is entitled to use the title the Honourable, but declines to style himself as such.

Biography

Early life and career

Toby Young's father was Michael Young, a Labour life peer and pioneering sociologist who coined the term "meritocracy". His mother was the novelist, sculptor and painter Sasha Moorsom. He was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford (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. After leaving Oxford in 1986 he joined The Times but was later fired. He then left for Harvard as a Fulbright scholar 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 England in 1988, and through 1990 worked as a teaching assistant at Cambridge in the Social and Political Sciences Faculty.

In 1991, Young founded and edited the Modern Review 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. This decision led to a fierce public battle with Burchill and her then lover, Charlotte Raven, a writer at the magazine.

Vanity Fair and later

Young moved to New York City shortly afterward to work for Carter at Vanity Fair, resulting in what a Los Angeles Times article called "an undistinguished six-month stint at the magazine". In fact, he was under contract at the magazine for the best part of three years. 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. 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, Young remained in New York for a further two years, working as a columnist at New York Press. He returned to England in 2000 and is currently an associate editor of The Spectator and a columnist on the Independent on Sunday and The Guardian. 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?. It was named Best New Comedy at the 2006 Theatregoers' Choice Awards.

Toby competed in the Channel 4 TV series Come Dine With Me. He also appeared as one of the panel of food critics comprising the titular "enemy" in the 2008 BBC Two series Eating with the Enemy.

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. The film was released in Britain and America on October 3, 2008.

Personal

Young is married to Caroline Bondy, with whom he has four children. Young said the couple met in Manhattan 1997 when the 23-year-old Bondy, the "little sister of an ex-girlfriend", 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". They became engaged in April 2000.

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".

Footnotes

References

• Toby Young official site