Toby Young - Access Interviews

Toby Young

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:51:53 +0100

'This rogue hair sprouting from every orifice wouldn't be so unendurable if I had any on top of my head'Whenever I look in the mirror, I am always faintly shocked. Do I really look that old? This would be understandable if I only glanced at myself every six months, but I examine my reflection at least twice a day. Even so, the extent of my decrepitude always catches me off guard.First, there are my eyebrows. In recent years they've become positively Denis Healey-like. I prune them at least once a week, yet it doesn't appear to make any difference. As my wife said earlier this week: "You're losing the battle of the eyebrows."Even worse is the hair sticking out of my ears. I recently joked to my three-year-old son that I had a spiders' nest in my head and if you looked closely you could see their legs emerging from my ears. He toddled over to peer into one of them and let out a shriek. I am now banned from kissing him goodnight in case a spider leaps on to his pillow.As for my nostril hair, it's so lustrous and plentiful, I'm thinking of allowing it to grow so I can construct some sort of elaborate comb-over.Of course, this rogue hair sprouting from every orifice wouldn't be so unendurable if I had any on top of my head. After 25 years you'd think I'd be used to baldness, particularly as I've kept my head shaven for almost the same length of time. But a couple of weeks ago I decided to let it grow and was shocked to discover that it's all grey and patchy like the coat of a mangy old wolfhound.God knows how I'm going to cope in my mid-50s. I may have to throw out every mirror in the house.BeautyToby Youngguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Toby Young

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:51:53 +0100

Toby Young knew Johnson and Cameron at university. How will the 'silverback gorilla' and 'smooth operator' come across in his film about their Oxford days?

Toby Young

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:51:53 +0100

Toby Young blew the chance of success in the US. Now a film is making him famous for failure. When Toby Young dreamed of how his glittering journalistic career would be immortalised on celluloid he had in mind an updated version of the 1940s films His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story. The raincoat and porkpie hat-wearing hacks played by Cary Grant in these films were the types Young had expected to meet when he crossed the pond to work in New York in the mid-Nineties. He was disappointed by the much-changed industry he encountered, now the subject of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, the film adaptation of his account of several years at Vanity Fair, starring Simon Pegg as Young, Kirsten Dunst as his love interest and Jeff Bridges as the editor Graydon Carter.

Toby Young

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:51:53 +0100

The British journalist sees his memoir 'How to Lose Friends & Alienate People' come to screen with Simon Pegg in the lead. WHEN life handed British journalist Toby Young lemons, as the cliche goes, he made lemonade. Not just any lemonade. After getting fired from his dream job as a writer for Vanity Fair magazine -- for repeatedly embarrassing editor Graydon Carter with stunts such as sending a strippergram to a colleague on Take Our Daughters to Work Day and snorting cocaine with bad-boy artist Damien Hirst during a photo shoot -- Young published a memoir in 2001 about his self-abuse and social stupidity titled "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People." But it didn't end there. Young continued to take his limited experiences and juice them beyond any reasonable expectation. He created an extensive body of work based around a handful of personal misfortunes and embarrassing social interactions, backdropped by Manhattan's gimlet swirl and peopled by vapid fashionistas, snobs and boldfaced names. ...

Toby Young

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:51:53 +0100

How do you cope with a man who leaves you in a bar because he forgot he was with you? As a movie opens on Toby Young's outrageous gaffes, his wife describes life with Britain's most socially inept man - and how to survive him. A first person piece, but gains an exemption into AI, just because. . .

Toby Young

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:51:53 +0100

Someone is shooting at Toby Young. Every minute there is an almighty "thwack" at the window of his shed-office. "It's all right," he says, jumping visibly. "It's just conkers from the horse chestnut tree." The thing is, quite a few people would like to shoot Young. He has been threatened with lawsuits by Liz Hurley, Robert Maxwell and Tina Brown. When Julie Burchill was asked to provide a quote for the jacket of his first volume of autobiography, 2001's How To Lose Friends & Alienate People, she replied: "I'll rot in hell before I give that little bastard a quote for his book." He ran it on the front cover.

Toby Young

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:51:53 +0100

Toby Young, writer, 44

Toby Young

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:51:53 +0100

Toby had a HUGH and cry over which actor would play him, but luckily one guy had him PEGGed Toby Young's rambling London home is like a creche. There is one tiny, mewling infant on a nappy-changing mat, a larger one - looking uncannily Toby-like with a domed, bald head - obstructing the kitchen doorway and two squabbling pre-schoolers tormenting each other in the garden. Presiding over the mayhem is a serene woman in black, Toby's wife Caroline. Toby, meanwhile, is conspicuously absent. Since embracing fatherhood - the Youngs have four children under five - he has retreated to a shed at the bottom of his garden to work. He's there now, looking benignly donnish in his book-lined refuge.