No life
Feeling green
Toby Young
Ispent last Sunday leafing through the Sunday Times 'Rich List' seeing how many people I know have made it into the top 1,000. I've been doing this since the Sunday Times first started publishing the list in 1988 and each year it becomes more and more depressing. Not only does the num- ber of my acquaintances on it increase, but the chances of ever getting on it myself grow smaller and smaller. Actually, to be perfectly honest, there was never any possi- bility I'd get on it, but as each year passes that becomes clearer and clearer. It's an annual reminder that I'm a big fat loser. First the good news. My old Oxford tuto- rial partner, Tim Jackson, is clearly in a great deal of trouble. According to the Mail on Sunday, which published its 'Rich List' a week earlier, the 35-year-old founder of Q.XL.com was worth £320 million on 12 March. On 19 March, by contrast, the Sun- day Times estimated his wealth at £272 mil- lion. Now, I know that some cynics will put this discrepancy down to the fact that any estimate of an individual's net worth is bound to be highly speculative, but I prefer to think that Jackson has lost £48 million in the space of a week. At that rate his for- tune will be completely wiped out by 1 June.
Now for the bad news. Matthew Freud, who at 36 is the same age as me, is a new entry this year with an estimated net worth of £75 million. I can't claim to be a friend of Mr Freud but I did have the pleasure of attending a wedding with him once. I remember being very excited because the bride, an old friend of mine, had promised to seat me next to Helena Bonham Carter. You can imagine my shock, therefore, when I found myself sitting next to Matthew Freud's wife instead. I scanned the room and, sure enough, there was the slippery PR man, grinning from ear to ear, sitting next to the gorgeous, pouting actress. It transpired that he'd crept out of the service and reshuffled the name-cards. On my other side was the groom's mother.
The only pleasure I derive from the list is confirming that some of the most success- ful members of my peer group haven't yet made it on. Each year I turn the pages of the 'Rich List' with trembling fingers expecting to come across the name of William Hamilton-Dalrymple, the dazzling- ly successful travel writer. The cut-off point this year was £30 million, a figure he has surely surpassed by now with his string of best-selling books. Incredibly, though, he wasn't on it. Some people have tried to deprive me of even this small comfort by claiming that there are plenty of rich peo- ple who, through a combination of discre- tion and offshore trusts, have managed to stay off the Sunday Times's radar screen. Hamilton-Dalrymple, they suggest, is just the type of cultivated, well-bred individual who would move heaven and earth to keep his name off such a list. Consequently, the fact that his name isn't on it doesn't mean his net worth isn't in the hundreds of millions.
I'm a little sceptical about this. In my experience, it's a myth that only the nou- veaux riches like to advertise their wealth. Some of the flashiest people I know are aristocrats, happy to whip out their black American Express cards at the slightest opportunity. The idea that there is some- thing unspeakably vulgar about conspicu- ous consumption is a lie the middle classes tell themselves to rationalise their envy of the rich. I've never known a rich person, however well-bred, who didn't find some way of publicising his or her good fortune. I know that if I had £30 million the first thing I'd do would be to ring the Sunday Times and tell them to put me on their list.
Next year I fully expect to see Nigella Lawson's name on it. She's just founded an Internet company called Nigella.com and I fear it's going to make her disgustingly rich. This, in turn, will start a trend whereby every print journalist I know will succeed in commodifying their byline. Soon we'll be deluged with A.A.Gill.com, Petsy.com and Taki.com. Indeed, I've just checked and all three of those domain names have been registered. Naturally, I also ran a check on Toby.com and — surprise, surprise — that's been registered too. It belongs to a company called Toby Speakers which sells audio equipment for cars. Still, there was one crumb of comfort. Hamilton-Dalrym- ple.com hasn't gone yet. Perhaps I should register it myself and offer to sell it to the balding wunderkind.
Previous page
