Toby Young

My son Ludo will be celebrating his fifth birthday this weekend with a party at the Build-a-Bear workshop in Westfield. Those of you who don’t have a small child will be blissfully ignorant of this new fad. Build-a-Bear Workshop is a toyshop-cum-factory in which children can construct their very own teddy bears from scratch. The stand-alone stuffed animal isn’t too expensive — they start at £9 — but add accessories and the price ratchets up. For instance, a Pink Beararmoire® Fashion Case is £24 — and Ludo is very keen on fashion. Caroline and I used to pride ourselves on not letting our children become too attached to their stuffed animals or blankets. We know the trouble they can cause.

It’s become an annual tradition, like the first cuckoo of spring. At the beginning of March, when state secondary schools send out acceptance or rejection letters to anxious parents, a New Labour stooge pops up to point out that the majority of parents managed to get their child into their first choice of school. This is proof, apparently, that most parents are happy with the schools their children end up in. A moment’s reflection reveals how spurious this argument is. The fact that a majority of parents manage to secure a place for their child at their first-choice school doesn’t mean they would not have chosen another school had a better one been available.

Earlier this week I was seriously tempted to call the National Bullying Helpline. Ever since I wrote a blog for the Daily Telegraph questioning whether Alexander McQueen really was a ‘genius’, I’ve become a whipping boy on Twitter, the social networking site. The strange thing is, my chief tormentors are fellow journalists. ‘Alexander McQueen: a thundering f***ing pr*** has his say,’ tweeted Alexis Petridis, the Guardian’s chief rock critic, on the day the blog appeared. This prompted a reply from Caitlan Moran, a Times columnist: ‘Toby Young hasn’t done ANYTHING other than be a c*** since 1993.’ Janice Turner, another Times columnist, agreed: ‘I’d love my kids to go to that school set up by T Young.

Like many authors, I include an email address at the end of my books so readers can get in touch to say how much they enjoyed them. That’s the idea, anyway. In fact, the vast majority of reader emails I get are requests for career advice. Take the following, which I received a couple of weeks ago: ‘I recently decided to embark on a little adventure and have moved across the pond to London. I know it is a dreadful time to be looking around for journalism work anywhere, but I was hoping that you might have some suggestions for me on navigating through journalism jobs here in London. I have been on a few interviews so far, but I was thinking that perhaps you might have some tips or ideas for me?

As someone trying to set up a school, I’ve been doing a bit of research into different pedagogic philosophies. What’s the most effective way to teach child-ren, particularly if they’re not that interested to begin with? Should we embrace an old-fashioned approach, with masters standing in front of blackboards reciting Latin verbs? Or a ‘personalised learning programme’ in which children acquire ‘skills’? People on both sides of the argument can point to successful examples. For instance, Maple Walk in Harlesden, one of the schools set up by Civitas, is conservative with a small ‘c’, favouring traditional pedagogy, and has proved a huge success.

A few weeks ago my friend James and his wife got a cat. They live in a leafy street in Holland Park, yet they’re so overprotective they refuse to allow Louis out of the house. His wife won’t even leave him alone, insisting they get a ‘babysitter’ if they go out. As the owner of a streetwise, shorthaired domestic called Trixie, I have been mercilessly taking the piss out of them. Trixie has been able to come and go as she pleases via a cat door since the day she arrived from the Mayhew Animal Shelter 18 months ago. She’s jet black and quite petite, like a miniature panther, and more than a match for any neighbourhood predators. The only precaution I’ve ever taken is to have her microchipped.

‘The basic principle of English social life is that everyone thinks he is a gentleman,’ wrote Evelyn Waugh. ‘There is a second principle of almost equal importance: everyone draws the line of demarcation immediately below his own heels.’ That was written 55 years ago and today almost exactly the opposite is true. According to a Guardian/ICM poll published earlier this week, almost no one in contemporary Britain sees themselves as ‘upper class’. The pollsters didn’t ask the respondents to define ‘upper class’, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of people draw the line of demarcation immediately above their own heads.

Why are local authorities so bad at PR? Don’t they realise they are engaged in a political fight for their lives? The nub of the Tories’ education policy — though they don’t express it like this — is to wrest control of state education away from local authorities. Given that educational provision is the chief responsibility of local authorities, they are in danger of losing their raison d’être. The main criticism of local education authorities is that they haven’t done enough to raise standards. As David Cameron pointed out earlier this week, the number of boys at Eton who received three As at A-level last year is greater than the total number of boys eligible for free school meals who received comparable results.

As a columnist, I’m often asked whether I deliberately place myself in embarrassing situations for the purpose of furnishing myself with comic material. The answer, regrettably, is no. My life is humiliating enough without me having to court embarrassment. However, when I read that a dating site called beautifulpeople.com had expelled over 5,000 members for letting themselves go over the festive period I felt compelled to submit a membership application. This involves uploading a photograph of yourself and then waiting for existing members to decide whether you’re attractive enough to join their exclusive ranks. They have a choice of four responses: ‘Yes, definitely’, ‘Hmm yes, OK’, ‘Hmm no, not really’ and ‘NO definitely NOT’.

If, like me, you’re convinced you’ll never be truly happy until you’ve shinned up the greasy pole it is easy to forget that not every high-status indicator is desirable. For instance, if I had £100 million my wife’s constant threats to divorce me might actually carry some weight. Then there’s the fate that befell David Ross, the co-founder of Carphone Warehouse, over Christmas. I’ve lost count of the number of Lithuanian girls who’ve stormed out of my house at 4 a.m., but since I’m not a ‘Tory tycoon’ the tabloids couldn’t care less. However, all of these disadvantages pale into insignificance next to a letter I saw pinned to a friend’s fridge on New Year’s Day. ‘Dear XXXX,’ it began.

I recently received an email from a friend asking if I would contribute to a book he’s editing entitled What Matters Now: prescriptions for a simpler life. ‘A new genre of literature is emerging about the roots of happiness,’ it began. ‘Authors like Alain de Botton, Oliver James and Naomi Klein argue that the materialist/celebrity culture has left people unhappier than ever. They argue that older and simpler pleasures — a walk in the country, the companionship of family and friends, a beautiful view — provide better oxygen for the soul than the acquisition of more branded goods or the pursuit of money, fame and status.

Shame has descended on the Young household this Christmas. When my wife picked up our four-year-old from school last week she was intercepted by his teacher who wanted a quiet word. ‘Oh no,’ she thought. ‘What’s Ludo done now?’ In fact, it was more a case of what I’d done — or failed to do. The teacher explained that she’d asked the children to write letters to Santa, saying what they wanted for Christmas. At the top of his list Ludo had written: ‘Lite bulb’. When the teacher asked him why he’d chosen such an unusual present he told her that the bulb in his bedroom had stopped working months ago and his deadbeat dad still hadn’t replaced it.

At the age of 25, the poet and critic William Ernest Henley lay in hospital suffering from an illness that had kept him bedridden for three years. He had been diagnosed with tuberculosis of the bone at the age of 12 and his left foot was amputated just below the knee. He’d just been told that he’d lose his right foot, too. It was in these circumstances that he composed ‘Invictus’, the poem that ends with the following verse: It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. Those are words to live by — and, indeed, Nelson Mandela did just that.

As readers of this column will know, I’ve spent the last year leading the efforts of a 250-strong group of local parents to start a new state secondary school in west London. One of the toughest things about this crusade is constantly having to bite my tongue. As a journalist, I used to delight in being able to say whatever I pleased and to hell with the consequences. Now I have to be more circumspect. One ill-judged phrase and the whole enterprise could be derailed. I’m often asked what sort of school we’re trying to set up and the answer I want to give — but am reluctant to because it could harm our cause — is the Eton of the state sector.

I watched Shadowlands again the other day, Richard Attenborough’s film about C.S. Lewis’s relationship with Joy Gresham, and was struck by one scene in particular. Anthony Hopkins is sitting beside the hospital bed of Debra Winger when suddenly she takes a turn for the worse. He leaps from his chair and runs out into the corridor. ‘Nurse, Nurse!’ he cries and almost instantly a nurse comes running and darts into his wife’s room. Shortly afterwards, a doctor appears and he updates Hopkins on Winger’s condition in a tactful, solicitous manner. For any middle-class person who’s spent time in a hospital recently, this seems laughably out of date.

The decision of Britain’s most notorious anonymous sex blogger to reveal her identify came as a great relief. It finally puts paid to the suspicion that Belle de Jour c’est moi. The first time my name was linked with the site was in a Mail on Sunday article in 2004 entitled: ‘Who does Belle the Blogger think she’s kidding?’ My wife didn’t read the article, but heard about it from a friend and immediately got the wrong end of the stick. ‘I gather some prostitute with an anonymous blog has outed you as one of her clients in the Mail on Sunday,’ she said. ‘No, no, they think I’m the author of the blog.’ ‘You? I don’t understand. Why would anyone pay to have sex with you?

I was slightly alarmed by the news that Harrow Council is recruiting 2,000 residents to join a network of ‘Neighbourhood Champions’. Their job will be to keep an eye out for evidence of graffiti, fly-tipping, littering and excessive noise, posting tip-offs on an anonymous website. What if the scheme is successful and other councils follow suit? Are we to become a nation of curtain-twitchers? The reason I’m concerned is that I know from my own case how easy it is to fall into this role. I have already become a kind of self-appointed policeman in my local area and heaven help my neighbours if I’m given any sort of official recognition.

I’m writing this having just flown back from Jamaica on the red eye (no pun intended). I feel a little shell-shocked, but not because I was up all night trying to stop my two-year-old son from running up and down the aisle screaming ‘Bollocks’. Rather, it’s because my wife and I spent our last evening at a resort called Hedonism II. I had wanted to go to this place ever since stumbling across a brochure on our first day. As far as I could tell from flicking through its pages, Hedonism II is essentially a nudist resort populated entirely by supermodels.

Americans taking offence on behalf of poor ‘victimised’ foreigners is offensive — to me Oh dear. I may have to write a book called How to Lose More Friends and Alienate More People. In a recent episode of Top Chef, the American cooking show I appear on, I complained about the other judges’ insistence on pronouncing ‘paella’ as ‘py-ay-a’. ‘You don’t say “Bar-the-lona” or “Me-hi-co”,’ I pointed out. ‘So why say ‘py-ay-a’?’ I thought this was fairly uncontroversial, but it was as if I had just produced a white hood and a burning cross.

As luck would have it, the opening gala of the London Film Festival usually coincides with my birthday, and this year was no exception. My wife and I put on our best evening clothes and set off on what promised to be a great night out: a movie premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square followed by a party at the Saatchi Gallery. This year, the film was Fantastic Mr Fox, Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s story. This is a firm favourite in our household, mainly because it is so gloriously ‘off message’ compared to 99 per cent of contemporary children’s literature. Instead of the usual homilies about inclusion and tolerance, it is a celebration of criminality.