Toby Young Self Pity Special

How does the click-bait seeking but distinctly average hack gain attention, while subliminally suggesting that the EU turns ordinary, decent people off? This conundrum has been navigated in no style at all by the loathsome Toby Young, who has inexplicably been made editor of Spectator Life magazine, and so has seen fit to award himself a column which will mean More And Bigger Paycheques For Himself Personally Now.

More not quite grown up analysis from Tobes

This weekly whinge is categorised as “Status Anxiety”, a situation that could be easily avoided by admitting that Tobes has no status worth the name, so he can cease being anxious about it. The latest instalment of this self-pitying drivelfest tells readers about “The day I stopped believing in the friendship myth … Only four out of ten pals turned up for my stag do, not including the ‘best friend’ who organised it”.

Do go on. “Before I got married, I was a fully signed-up member of the friendship cult. Like many young men, I regarded my close friends as a kind of substitute family, with all the accompanying ties and responsibilities. If one of them was in trouble, you did everything in your power to help them and if you were in trouble you could expect the same of them”. And these friends wouldn’t turn up down the pub to have a few scoops with him?

Well, not as such, because Tobes, or rather a friend of his, did not invite his pals down the Rub-A-Dub. “There were about ten people I placed in the innermost circle - my own personal Cosa Nostra - and I invited them all to Malaga a week before I got married”. And what happened? “I experienced a brutal reality check when only four of the ten honoured guests appeared at the Spanish hotel on the Friday evening. The no-shows included my best friend, the organiser of the festivities”. What a wise fellow.

Why would these friends pass up the chance of spending a weekend with Tobes, apart from the obvious reason, that he’s a complete [characterisation omitted]? He knew why: “The true test isn’t when you’re in trouble … It’s whether they’re prepared to inconvenience themselves for your benefit, particularly if it involves getting on a plane and shelling out a few hundred quid”. SHELLING OUT A FEW HUNDRED QUID?

A word in your shell-like, Tobes: you should have stuck to going down the Rub-A-Dub and getting Elephants Trunk And Mozart. Then they would all have turned up. Expecting folks to fly out somewhere, putting aside several days of their time, in order to serve your vanity is not a test of friendship. It’s an exercise in Olympic standard masochism.

It does not help Tobes’ cause that his previous works include “How to lose friends and alienate people”, nor that he has, by his hard work and diligent application, slagged off the entire state education sector before learning just what is involved in running a school, thus earning himself the nickname Captain Bellend. Nor does it help his cause that, in wanting to boss others around yet please himself, he has shown himself to be a hypocrite.

But credit to him for allowing the world to laugh at his realisation of his true worth.