Toby Young

Poor Sophie Dahl. After appearing on the Today programme to make an appeal for charitable donations to the Roald Dahl Museum, she has become an object of ­ridicule. This was partly prompted by the amount of money she was asking for and the use for which it was intended: £500,000 does seem like rather a lot to fund the relocation of Dahl’s writing shed from the bottom of her grandmother’s garden to the nearby museum in Great Missenden. A couple of years ago I erected a ‘writing shed’ at the bottom of my garden — at least, that’s how I described it to my wife — and the total cost was approximately £12,500. But as Dahl pointed out to the interviewer, moving the shed is quite a process and involves a lot of archivists.

I’m writing this the day before the West London Free School is due to open and it’s not an exaggeration to say I’ve been looking forward to this moment for two years. The thought of our first cohort of pupils streaming through the gates, resplendent in their WLFS blazers, has sustained me through many a dark hour.   I was hoping to be in tip-top shape for this auspicious occasion and booked a ten-day holiday in Cornwall. The idea was to switch off the iPhone, get out the boogie board and spend my time frolicking in the surf with my lovely wife. Trouble is, we were sharing our holiday cottage with some friends and the other husband turned out to be better at everything than me. Surfing, map-reading, canoeing — you name it.

Next Friday, Boris Johnson will officially open the West London Free School. I’m particularly pleased that the ribbon is being cut by a former editor of this magazine. Next Friday, Boris Johnson will officially open the West London Free School. I’m particularly pleased that the ribbon is being cut by a former editor of this magazine. Not only is The Spectator my longest-standing employer and my spiritual home — I’ve been a columnist for 13 years — but many of the ideas that have informed the set-up of the school were first rehearsed in these pages. It’s also appropriate in another respect, because it was encountering Boris at Oxford that first made me aware of the huge gulf between the private and state education sector.

Don’t be fooled – you’d get into Oxford Rachel Johnson calls to tell me she’s doing a piece for the Financial Times saying she wouldn’t have got into Oxford if she’d been applying this year. She’s quite wrong, of course. A myth has grown up among my generation of Oxford graduates that it’s harder for their children to get in than it was for them, when in fact the opposite is true. There are two reasons why they think this. First, they mistakenly believe that getting two As and an A* in their A-levels — the standard Oxford offer today — is beyond them. This ignores the rampant grade inflation of the past 25 years.

As I write this, my face and hands are covered in scabs. I’d love to say I sustained these injuries while trying to save the Oxfam shop on Ealing Green from looters. (It was looted, by the way.) But the truth is I fell off my bike on the way to lunch with another journalist. The brake cable got tangled up in the front wheel and the bike came to an abrupt halt. No stitches, but I look terrible, as though someone has tried to carve a map of the world into my face. This was a blessing in disguise because it meant I turned down an opportunity to appear alongside David Starkey on Newsnight last Friday. Had I done so, I’m not confident I would have challenged his remarks that the whole world and his dog have condemned as ‘racist’.

At first, I thought he was the site foreman. He was in his mid-40s, well-built, standing in front of a building site on Madeley Road in Ealing. This leafy suburb in west London, which is about two miles from my house in Acton, was the scene of some of the worst rioting on Monday night and I had cycled over there the following day to try and help with the clean-up. I took a detour via Madeley Road on my way home. On closer inspection, the house I’d taken to be a building site was just an ordinary home — or what was left of it — after a gang of thugs had tried to smash their way in the previous night. The man standing at the front gate, arms folded like a bouncer, was the householder. ‘There were between 30 and 40 of them,’ he said.

Sometimes, burglars really do mess with the Wrong Guy At 4.20 a.m. last Friday, my friend and neighbour was awoken by the sound of breaking glass. It was one of the panels in his front door and when the noise had died away he could make out the voices of two young men intent on entering his house. Lying next to him was his wife and, in adjacent bedrooms, their three young daughters. As he lay in bed wondering what to do, it occurred to him that the two men trying to break into his house had no reason to think it wasn’t occupied. On the contrary, his car was in the driveway and his bull terrier was in its basket in the hall. Whatever these men intended to do, they had clearly taken into account that the house was occupied by a young family.

What’s the secret of successful parenting? Like most middle-class parents, I don’t just want my children to be happy. I want them to have proper careers as well. I’d like each of them to go to a Russell Group university — ideally Oxford or Cambridge — and then do a further degree. If they win a scholarship to do postgraduate work at Harvard or Yale, so much the better. And I want them to achieve all this without spending a penny on their education. The only parenting guide I’ve ever read is Andrew Gimson’s biography of Boris Johnson. You won’t find it in the ‘Parenting’ section of Waterstone’s, but it’s a font of useful information nevertheless.

Wow. As I’m writing this, Wendi Deng is scanning the House of Commons committee room, searching for any additional assailants, as her husband and son-in-law are testifying before the Culture, Media and Sport select committee. Ten minutes earlier, she launched herself like a missile at a pie-throwing protestor, delivering a stinging blow to his face. It was something to behold: the tiger wife in full battle cry. Moments later, dollops of shaving foam were dripping down the hapless protestor’s face. Not just a loyal and devoted wife, but her family’s head of security as well. The stupidity of Jonnie Marbles, the anti-cuts protestor in question, is staggering.

Many people have accused me of toadying up to the Murdoch gang in the past week or so, since I’m one of the few journalists willing to go on record to defend the Dirty Digger. Actually, it’s out of conviction rather than any hope of preferment. I really do believe that, on balance, Murdoch has been a force for good in our industry. Not only has he subsidised the Times, keeping it afloat in spite of its losses, but he broke the back of the British print unions and in doing so provided the newspaper business with a new lease of life. Had he not challenged the unions’ restrictive practices, the Independent and Independent on Sunday might never have been launched and it’s doubtful the Guardian and Observer would have survived until now.

Toby Young suffers from Status Anxiety Forgive me if I don’t join in the orgy of sanctimony surrounding the News of the World. If any evidence is uncovered that proves a member of the paper’s staff hacked into Milly Dowler’s phone and deleted her voicemail messages, then, yes, he or she should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But to describe such behaviour as ‘shocking’ is to reveal an astonishing ignorance about the tabloid profession. It’s a bit like claiming to be ‘shocked’ when a celebrity is caught cheating on his wife or a politician is caught lying through his teeth.

Someone has sent me an extraordinary newsletter from the outgoing secretary of the North Yorkshire NUT. It provides a unique insight into the leadership of the most militant of the teaching unions. As anyone with a child at school will know, the NUT has been instrumental in organising this week’s ‘day of action’ in the hope of closing as many schools as possible across the country. Some of it is just boilerplate. For instance, there’s a quote from Fiona Millar claiming that the coalition’s academy programme is an abysmal failure. In fact, more than 450 academies have opened since last September — bringing the total to over 650.

I spent last weekend in Ibiza. That makes me sound like a plutocrat, but I discovered that if you’re prepared to arrive on the island at 1.15 a.m. on EasyJet it’s just about affordable. A friend who’s taken a villa invited my whole family to come and stay and that’s so rare these days I couldn’t turn him down. He took Caroline and me to a party on Friday night that was attended by the crème de la crème of Ibizan society — and Ibiza is pretty ritzy these days. These are the sort of people commonly described as the ‘super rich’ — the owners of high-street fashion chains, hedge fund billionaires, Russian oligarchs. Many of them had arrived in Ibiza that morning on private jets.

When my son Ludo first suggested selling lemonade outside our house in Acton as a way of earning some extra pocket money, I was a bit dubious. Don’t you need a licence from the European Union before you can set up a stall in your driveway? And what about ’elf and safety? I could picture some busybody from the council, armed with a testing kit, reprimanding my six-year-old for not using organic lemons. Then I thought, ‘Sod it.’ If he wanted to earn some money instead of depending on handouts from his parents, then good luck to him. He set up his stand at the end of our driveway at around 1 p.m. last Saturday, complete with a handwritten sign, a pile of cups and a jug of freshly made lemonade.

Two weeks ago, the London Evening Standard outed me as one of four ‘celebrities’ who’d broken the super-injunction about Ryan Giggs. According to the newspaper: ‘Lawyers warned the stars could face a huge bill for damages after revealing the name of the Premier League footballer on microblogging site Twitter.’ My crime was to post the following tweet after the story broke that Giggs’s lawyers were going after the site’s American owners: ‘In other news, Ryan Giggs has decided to sue “the grapevine”. “We can’t have people gossiping over the garden fence,” said Schillings CEO.’ Rather a feeble joke and hardly worth going to jail for. Luckily, nothing happened.

Toby Young suffers from Status Anxiety I’m writing this from the Hay Festival in Wales, which has become an annual pilgrimage for my family and me. The children can be parked in a masterclass on how to draw dragons while I slope off and listen to David Miliband being interviewed by Matthew d’Ancona. Not everyone’s idea of heaven, perhaps, but it beats taking them to the swings in Acton Park. The festival is being sponsored by the Telegraph this year — it used to be the Guardian — and I was hoping it would have a more conservative flavour.

As I get older I’ve begun to obsessively monitor myself for evidence of mental deterioration. For instance, I cannot watch Match of the Day without reciting the names of as many Premier League goalkeepers as I can remember. I do it so often it has become a Pavlovian response. Another test is trying to remember every phone number I’ve ever had, starting with the first. I wouldn’t recommend either as a means of reassurance. The satisfaction I feel on being able to remember a particular name or number is easily outweighed by the waves of anxiety when I can’t. I must have googled ‘Early Onset Alzheimer’s’ more often than my own name. However, not all the signs of encroaching decrepitude are to be regretted.