“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
“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.”
“People in London think of London as the center of the world, whereas New Yorkers think the world ends three miles outside of Manhattan.”
“I wouldn’t describe myself as a master of anything.”
“The moment I’m perceived to be even a tiny bit successful, my career will go down the pan.”
“If anything bad happens, the media will leap on it. We’re under a huge obligation to be successful.”
“There’s no reason why you can’t deliver a grammar-school curriculum to an all-ability intake.”
“I’ve never been to a shrink. But my parents were very psychologically literate – my father had undergone Freudian analysis – and we often talked about other people in psychological terms, so I picked up a lot of that.”
“Oddly, I do have a problem with authority. I find it very difficult to knuckle down and follow rules. Which are the classic symptoms of someone who has a troubled relationship with their father. And yet, I never had a problem with my father.”
“I expect that in 40 years’ time I’ll be writing political tomes and working for an organisation like Oxfam.”
“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’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.”
“’Top Chef’ is a very smooth-running machine. All the people working there are incredibly professional and absolutely at the top of their game.”
“I miss being fawned over by restaurateurs and chefs.”
“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’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.”
“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.”
“America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“In my capacity as a board member of the OfS, I hope to be impartial, objective, and fair.”
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