Toby Young s/d

how does ilx feel about toby young? read 'how to lose friends' and i'm halfway through the follow-up now. love them both, in pain laughing at some parts but other than these books and his stint on come dine with me i don't know much about him. i remember catching part of a bbc4 doc about him and burchill on the modern review which looked great but has never been repeated or appeared on torrent sites

once i've read the books i'm planning to go through his site to read his old articles - esp the US lads mag stuff from the late 90s

are there any other similarly themed autobiographies that are worth reading?

apparently he googles himself pretty often so he'll undoubtedly come across this - hey toby!

only know this dude from being a judge on top chef, and he was incredibly irritating on that.

no love on ilx for toby? what was he like on top chef, JS?

wondering if anyone knows who the 'record producer' is in No Hands Clapping? what with the joe meek film coming out this week, makes me think it was that - although there's no guarantee the guy was a record producer after all.

interesting article on who alex de silva (from How To Lose Friends...) really is: http://www.infinitemonkeys.co.uk/gasgiant/000130.shtml
he says in the follow-up that Alex/Sacha (did he name his first kid after him?) severed all ties with him after the first book.

his stuff about meritocracy is fascinating:
America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure. In Britain, by contrast, we still think that class plays a part in determining a person's life chances, so we're less inclined to celebrate success and less inclined to condemn failure. The upshot is that it's much easier to be a failure in Britain than it is in America.

would people on here agree with this? his defense of the class system is slightly suspect as he's half a lord or something (inherited from his father), so it could be said he has a vested interest in promoting the class system over meritocracy but still, it's a persuasive argument (for someone who hasn't ever been to america, admittedly)

i just remembered, their first child was named after his wife's mother so not after geri halliwell's baby's dad no

Surely the guy's a complete arsehole?

Very entertaining on Top Chef as a true asshole. I loved the guy, if they can keep both him and Gail Simmons' breasts on the show going forward, I will be a happy man.

this diary entry just after the birth of their first child really made me laugh. bit 70s sitcom but still great:

I arrive at the hospital clutching my digital camera. (Spot the dad!) My plan is to take a picture of Caroline and the baby and email it to all our friends, but as I'm making my way across the delivery ward I can't help noticing an adorable-looking black baby. This gives me an idea. If I can just persuade Caroline to let me photograph her holding this baby, I can email that picture to all our friends instead. No explanation, just the words, 'Marcellus was born yesterday at 9.52am. He weighs 10lb 3 ounces and Caroline reckons he's going to be a boxer.'

toby young's father Michael Young actually coined the term meritocracy, and I think a lot of jnr's career has been abt kicking against daddy's liberal values - doesn't make him any less of an utter cock, mind

the impression given from the book is that he has masses of respect for his dad, whole sections on his achievements and how great he is.

he doesn't go into politics much but it doesn't seem he was particularly anti-liberal.

has anyone spotted that bbc modern review doc on the torrent sites or anywhere? would love to see

Never change Toby!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/apr/04/pro-cuts-rally-against-debt?CMP=twt_gu

wonder

Toby Young - the eternal answer to the question, Who is the douchiest of all?

The man is truly missed on Top Chef.

Can you take him back?

need to build rocket, fire toby young into the sun

toby young, relevant commentator and broadcaster

I know, barely a week goes by when I don't hear somebody in the pub saying "goddam that Toby Young is at it again".

... that's probably Toby Young you're hearing

his father would be so proud

nah my dad doesn't have a fucking clue who is either

who HE is

Compare the vim and vinegar of Right-wing bloggers with their wilted lettuce Left-wing counterparts. We have Melanie Philips, they have Penny Red. We have Guido Fawkes, they have LabourList. We have James Delingpole, they have George Monbiot. A Right-wing meteor bursts into the blogosphere every six months or so. To date, the Left has yet to produce a single star.

Think he just named three stars tbh.

he's right about Leftie bloggers but really what he's saying is the Right have the hilarious mentalists and the Left have the fucking tedious ones

"Brilliant"

It is always less intellectually rigorous to be a reactionary, which is why the right has so many people vying to be the next Phillips/Littlejohn.

In addition to all his other fuckitude, Toby Young still owes me £50 for Modern Review copy killed so he could run the last issue as his own personal CV. Twat.

Loathed him ever since reading "How to Lose Friends ... ", which is supremely annoying for its overuse of the phrase "needless to say", if nothing else.
Rather pleased that he is now such a smarmy Tory lickspittle, as it's rare one's prejudices turn out to be so handsomely justified.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/the-day-i-stopped-believing-in-the-friendship-myth/

Every single thing about this article is beautiful. Literally every single thing.

no love on ilx for toby?

My belief in the unbreakable bonds of friendship was a sentimental illusion. The true test isn’t when you’re in trouble — it’s relatively easy to stand by your friends in their hour of need, although, come to think of it, plenty of my friends have failed that test, too. It’s whether they’re prepared to inconvenience themselves for your benefit, particularly if it involves getting on a plane and shelling out a few hundred quid. Turned out 60 per cent of the people I regarded as my closest friends weren’t.

what a putz

loooool

You can imagine the increasing awkwardness and desperation of the few people who actually did go along, and for a moment I actually felt sorry for them, before remembering they were the sort of people who would willingly go on a stag weekend with Toby Young. And as proven, that's a fucking miniscule demographic.

lmao if that was a reddit post it would have been screengrabbed and posted here

also it's crazy that as recently as seven years ago "how does ilx feel about toby young?" was apparently not a rhetorical question

omg

he's a putz but I used to love The Modern Review back in the day.

Needless to say

did an actual caper around my kitchen on seeing that headline

just needs the Wealdstone Raider to weigh in at this point

author of 'how to lose friends and alienate people' surprised when his alleged friends don't want to spend hundreds of pounds to be trapped with him for several days

The research he refers to is classic as well...

https://english.tau.ac.il/news/friendship

"And our difficulty determining the reciprocity of friendship significantly limits our ability to engage in cooperative arrangements. We learned that we can't rely on our instincts or intuition. There must be an objective way to measure these relationships and quantify their impact."

There must be an app for that.

author of 'how to lose friends and alienate people' surprised when his alleged friends don't want to spend hundreds of pounds to be trapped with him for several days

lol irony

Toby Young says Corbyn couldn't get into uni. I ask how he got into Oxford. He deletes tweet. Wasn't rhetorical question - see his memoir: pic.twitter.com/Uwu80B1l5C

— Conrad Landin (@conradlandin) June 2, 2017

hah! there is literally no end to the terribleness of TY. Always an extra layer of privilege or other types awfulness to discover.

i still have the first issue of the modern review squirrelled away someway, i shd dig it out and blog it for (angry?) lols -- he co-founded and co-edited it julie burchill (she is also terrible of course but he is unbelievable leagues worse)

i think his essay on the breakthrough importance to sexual and gender tolerance of the batman movie feat.michele pfeiffer as catwoman -- bcz she wears shiny leather QED -- was not in this issue, tho it must be from around the same date (1989-ish)

there was a twitter thread earlier featuring Young, Dan Hodges, Julia Hartley-Brewer, Allison Pearson and probably a few other awful terrible columnists crowing about Corbyn, if he won, would have them put in prison and it was one of the ugliest, sorriest, most own-goaling self-congratulatory circle jerks ever to grace twitter. I'm not a huge Corbyn fan but such things only make me warm to him.

lol

I think I mentioned it on another thread that I have a memory of reading Julie Burchill stating that Toby Young didn't want any more Nick Hornby contributions to the Modern Review published - purely on the grounds that he was bald and old looking rather than content.

Toby Young seems to be an irredeemable shitheel tbh and one whose poisonous incompetence has escaped the ring-fenced grounds of right wing columny and now helped ruin our school system

This piece in @Quillette is incredible — gruesome details of a genocide that occurred in France during the Revolution and has been hushed up by French historians who don’t want to tarnish the Republic’s origin myth. https://t.co/80GMYRSArm

— Toby Young (@toadmeister) March 11, 2019

becoming an unemployable social pariah has given him the time + space to read his first history book.

Dead? No. Anyway he's a fucking idiot if he thinks French historians haven't covered this ad nauseum.

oh no it appears it's an article about a massacre which is widely known by anyone who has studied French history in France. And he appears to have made a comment about it that confirms he's either a loudmouthed dissembling idiot who has not even read it or is thick as pigshit, either cap suits him!

Lads, my Toby Young thread is better

damn, sorry I just clicked on the top one presuming it was that. This fucking thread title alone is worthy of an fp.

whichever toby young thread calzino is holding forth in is at any given moment the best toby young thread tbf

tbf this one is good for Youngshaming erstwhile ILXors who had positive things to say about Toby Young

tbf there's only one

tbf the French have long been known for their unquestioning support for and uncritical acceptance of the French Revolution, it's aims and tenets, this is why there's a statue of Robespierre in every town square, er...

tbf let's never use 'tbf' in this thread again

is there some French equivalent of Tristam Hunt who writes sanitised versions of The Terror? I couldn't imagine them being taught in universities or getting much critical traction!

Maybe there's a French Dan Snow galumphing about breathlessly explaining the differences between the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security to rapt French TV audiences.

lol! He should do a reconstruction (with him playing him) showing how his great-grandfather repeatedly went on racist rants about "French-colonial niggers" at the versailles conference.