Toby Young Quotes

I think I've been wishing for celebrity for so long that I've got used to being someone who's petitioning the establishment for acceptance ... my whole schtick, my whole identity, is so wrapped up in being a petitioner that I don't really know how to react now that petition has been granted.

I wouldn't describe myself as a master of anything.

My life's ambition is to play a James Bond villain. I have the cat and the eye-patch, so I'm just waiting for the call. For some reason, though, the phone hasn't rung.

I expect that in 40 years' time I'll be writing political tomes and working for an organisation like Oxfam.

When I was writing my column, I would almost always be recognized when I was in a restaurant, even if I was reviewing it and had booked under a fake name, so free stuff would start coming out of the kitchen on a conveyer belt, fantastic wines would be opened at my table. Now I can't even get a reservation on the pizza joint on the corner.

I miss being fawned over by restaurateurs and chefs.

I tried being a mechanic and I tried catering, but I realized I had even less aptitude for semi-skilled labour than for academic work.

I swear, I didn't really go in thinking, 'I'll be the Simon Cowell' of 'Top Chef.' I was just used to being a judge on British food shows where people are much more outspoken and rather rude. That's the culture over here.

It was journalism at its best: irreverent, mischievous and beholden to no one.

There's no reason why you can't deliver a grammar-school curriculum to an all-ability intake.

America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.

If anything bad happens, the media will leap on it. We're under a huge obligation to be successful.

People in London think of London as the center of the world, whereas New Yorkers think the world ends three miles outside of Manhattan.

It's very different doing a food show in America and doing one in Britain. I did a 20-part series for the BBC series called 'Eating With the Enemy.' The budget for all 20 episodes was probably the budget for a single episode of 'Top Chef.' It's the difference between making a home movie in your backyard and going to Hollywood.

I really like the Observer. I think I'd love to have a column with a broad reach that would enable me to do some proper reporting, but keep it on sort of a humorous level. I've always had a very happy experience writing for them.

I was once hired to write a column for 'The Guardian' and then got fired before I'd submitted my first one. That was unusual. Most newspapers wait until I've written at least one piece for them before firing me.