Toby Young

Toby Young

Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.

Saturday

Toby Young

Who needs friends?

Cloaca, Kevin Spacey’s debut as the artistic director of the Old Vic, must rank as one of the biggest disappointments of the year. It isn’t bad, exactly, but I was expecting so much more from the man who electrified British theatergoers with his star turn in The Iceman Cometh six years ago. I sat there in the audience thinking, ‘He put his career in Hollywood on hold for this?’ A new play by a Dutch author called Maria Goos, Cloaca is reminiscent of Art, the long-running hit about three middle-aged male friends who argue about the value of a blank canvas.

Saturday

Toby Young

Preserving our heritage

What will happen to British culture when the United Kingdom disintegrates into half a dozen warring republics? Who will protect our museums from marauding bands of looters when the rule of law breaks down? What will become of the crown jewels when the royal family is banished to Monaco? If our cultural heritage survives at all, it’ll be thanks largely to India, judging by the loving care with which three classic works of English literature have been adapted recently. Later this year, cinema-goers have two treats in store: Bride and Prejudice, in which Elizabeth Bennett is transformed into a Bollywood heroine, and Vanity Fair, Mira Nair’s distinctly Indian take on Thackeray’s masterpiece.

Saturday

Toby Young

Dishing only some of the dirt

This book, which presents itself as a no-holds-barred account of Joe Eszterhas’s reign as the toughest and most highly-paid screenwriter in Hollywood, is doubly misleading. To begin with, it’s heavily censored; and, secondly, he isn’t the fierce defender of his work that he purports to be, at least not judging from the way he’s allowed the lawyers to decimate this book. Eszterhas revels in his image as a Hollywood bad boy. When a lowly grip on the set of Betrayed, his 1988 film starring Debra Winger and Tom Berenger, suggests how the film’s ending might be improved, the warrior-screenwriter punches him in the stomach. The director of another of his scripts receives a memo that’s so eviscerating he suffers a heart attack while reading it.

Saturday

Toby Young

Strutting their stuff

H. L. Mencken once said that the function of journalism was to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, but few of us manage to live up to that standard today. On the contrary, most of us are more likely to hurl ourselves at the feet of the high and mighty and ignore everyone else. Mencken’s thoroughbreds are now so rare that when you come across one it’s like encountering a unicorn. Michael Wolff is one such creature. He’s been throwing custard pies at the rich and powerful since he was appointed New York magazine’s media columnist in 1998. His willingness to skewer the robber barons of the media-industrial complex has made him one of the most famous journalists in America and Autumn of the Moguls is his greatest hits collection.

Saturday

Toby Young

From one hustler to another

Dear James, Thanks for sending me a copy of your … what shall we call it? Memoir? Novel? Anyway, I really enjoyed it. You’ve completely captured what it was like to be an Oxford undergraduate in the mid-80s — all that Sloane Ranger crap, the Pimms, the seccies. Every time I turned the page I had a horrible jolt of recognition. ‘Oh Christ,’ I kept thinking. ‘Were we really that bad?’ (We were, we were.) The drug stuff, too, is absolutely spot on. I don’t think I’ve ever read such an accurate account of what it’s like to smoke dope. Or drop acid. Or take shrooms.

Saturday

Toby Young

Why our gods must die

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. For the next 24 hours I'll be glued to my television set watching the final moments of Celebrity Big Brother. Admittedly, it hasn't proved quite as compelling as the first series, but it has been pretty entertaining nevertheless. I'll be particularly interested to see who wins, because the person emerging triumphantly from the house tomorrow night could easily have been me. I was first contacted about appearing on Celebrity Big Brother on 2 October by a woman claiming to be one of the producers. Naturally, I assumed it was a practical joke being played on me by one of my friends. It wasn't until I received a formal letter the following day that my doubts were finally laid to rest.

Saturday

Toby Young

From Festival to Fringe

The big play at Edinburgh this year - the one with Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon in it - was The Guys, a heartfelt tribute to the 'ordinary' heroes of 11 September. Written by a journalist called Ann Nelson, it tells the story of her encounter with a New York fire captain who asked for her help when he was landed with the task of composing eulogies to the eight men who died under his watch. I didn't manage to get a ticket to The Guys so I've no idea how Nelson handled this assignment, but it sounds like a walk in the park compared to covering the Edinburgh Festival.