British - Journalist | 1963 -
'Top Chef' is a very smooth-running machine. All the people working there are incredibly professional and absolutely at the top of their game.
Toby Young
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I miss being fawned over by restaurateurs and chefs.
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You know when you tell a self-deprecating story at a dinner party, everyone's laughing along with you? But then when someone else repeats that same story at another dinner party you feel they're all laughing at you?
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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.
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I've become a professional failure - in order to pay the mortgage I have to remain unemployed. Luckily, a disaster always seems to befall me at exactly the right moment.
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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.
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America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.
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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.
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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.
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In Britain, by contrast, we still think that class plays a part in determining a person's life chances, so we're less inclined to celebrate success and less inclined to condemn failure. The upshot is that it's much easier to be a failure in Britain than it is in America.
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Teachers complain a lot about how tough their job is. But, you know, the day begins in most schools at nine o'clock, ends at 3.30 P.M. They have six weeks' holiday during the summer, two weeks' holiday at Easter and at Christmas. Yes, they don't just work when they're at school, but even so, compared to a lot of other jobs, it's not that tough.
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The fact that I'm a Tory who hasn't worked at a university - at least, not since I taught at Cambridge in 1990 - doesn't disqualify me from serving on the board of the OfS.
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