Toby Young
Status anxiety columnist
About 15 years ago, when I was single and living in New York, I acquired what I can only describe as a stalker. A woman took exception to a newspaper article I’d written and started bombarding me with emails. For about a year, she sent me three or four emails a day, demanding a reply. In one of these emails she claimed to be a columnist for a magazine called Chest Monthly, and that piqued my interest. So I invited her on a date. We agreed to meet in a café and she was quite difficult to spot because, contrary to my fevered imaginings, she was completely flat-chested. I asked her how she’d managed to land a job as a columnist for Chest Monthly. There was a deathly silence as it dawned on her that this was the only reason I’d asked her out. ‘Chess Monthly,’ she said, coldly. ‘Not Chest Monthly. Chess Monthly.’ She stopped emailing me after that.
Taki
High life columnist
It was around 1972, my father had just had his portrait painted by Salvador Dalí, an old buddy of his, and Dad and I went to the Meurice hotel in Paris where Dalí and his wife Gala unveiled it. We had champagne, Dalí and Dad cracked jokes at my expense, and then the great man asked me what I was doing with my life. I told him I was off to London to try and crack the English scene, journalist-wise, that is. ‘Eh bien, il faut que tu appel la plus jolie de tous, ma cheri…’ He gave me her telephone number and said he would ring her. Two days later, in London, I called the lady and, yes, she was free for dinner. We met at Annabel’s, where Louis, the maitre d’, gave me a hell of a table. She was blonde and beautiful. Her voice was low and she was taller than me, but what the hell. After dinner I took her to my flat in Dunraven Street nearby. Holding her hand in the cab, I noticed it to be twice the size of mine. After some more drinks at home I pounced, but just as I did, I noticed her larynx was — well — as big as a Tiger Panzer. So I fished into my wallet, pulled out a rather large bill, and asked for the truth. Was she… a man? ‘Yes, sweetie pie, I am a hell of a man and all yours,’ she or he said. I gave her a brief peck on the cheek and showed her out. That Dalí, what a card!
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