I suppose I’d better call it Young Syndrome. It’s not as though he needs more publicity, or inflation of his ego. Having Simon Pegg play him in a film adaptation of his own memoirs is already driving his self-regard to levels scarcely reached by any other living person, apart from perhaps Simon Cowell or Paul Burrell. But sometimes you just have to acknowledge the superlative qualities of one individual. And I have to confess that Toby Young is simply the best example there is of a phenomenon of our age. The individual whose real income can never match their perceived status.

Of course there have been examples before of characters who embodied the tension between the need to keep up appearances and the reality of dwindling assets. From Wilkins Micawber in David Copperfield to Audrey fforbes-Hamilton in To The Manor Born, England’s cultural life is marked by the persistence of figures who can’t match the status they aspire to with the income they actually draw. But there is a very novel type of disparity which marks modern Britain.

It’s the existence of a class who succeed in projecting cachet while permanently finding themselves strapped for cash.

These people exist in professions and careers which have never been more desired or aspirational. They enjoy jobs which bring them proximity to fame and fortune, they get to nibble at the tables which groan with luxury. But they still go home every night to beans on toast in a postcode still not penetrated by a branch of Starbucks, never mind an M&S Simply Food. But, apart from Toby (who, as he reminds us in one of his many columns, is an iconic media figure who still can’t afford to live in Shepherd’s Bush), who are these people who embody aspiration during the day but live lives far removed from solid haute bourgeois comfort at night? Well, they exist in a variety of professions, most of which tend to be concentrated in the metropolis. They are researchers and assistant producers in television, editors in publishing firms, newspaper diarists, jobbing book reviewers and, indeed, almost all arts critics, researchers for political parties, senior managers for charities and voluntary organisations, all classical musicians who aren’t soloists and every academic who isn’t Niall Ferguson or David Starkey (and yes that even includes Tristram Hunt . . .).

What unites this otherwise disparate group is that they all do jobs that millions envy but their earnings fall significantly below the mean level for the professional middle classes. During their working day they can enjoy the sort of lifestyle normally accessible only to the genuinely wealthy. Figures in publishing lunch at The Ivy, sustained by corporate expense accounts, critics enjoy Covent Garden luxury, and champagne of an opening night, and junior TV figures and newspaper diarists can have a giddier social life than Paris Hilton by skilfully working their access to launches and wrap parties. Even political researchers and academics can enjoy the odd subsidised meal in pleasingly grand surroundings or invitations to conferences at someone else’s expense. If we were to think of a quintessential middle-class professional celebrity, someone whose fame springs from professional expertise rather than accident or notoriety, who would fit the category better than Shami Chakrabarti? Yet while Shami enjoys a status in British public life which is near-totemic, her actual income as a civil-service lawyer turned campaigner is a tiny fraction of what she could have commanded by now had she gone to the bar or joined a City law firm.

It’s the same, I suspect, for Toby. Had someone with his ingenuity, facility with language and self-confidence gone to the bar, or into, say, managing advertising accounts, they would have enjoyed, I am certain, significant material rewards. But in Toby’s case the lure of the byline in Vanity Fair, the charm of the invitation to the Spectator lunch, the daily deposits in the ego bank account which come from a high media profile all proved more tempting than the straight and arduous path to wealth that a more anonymous career might have provided.

The American writer David Brooks has written about this trend in America and has coined the phrase S.I.D. (status/income disequilibrium) for the phenomenon. But what has always struck me about America is the way in which status and income are much more precisely correlated than almost anywhere else. As any academic shivering in his garret and dreaming of Yale salaries will tell you. It is Britain, more than any country I can think of, and contemporary London more than any other place I can conceive of, where this disequilibrium exists. We are increasingly a nation in the grip of SIDness.

Does it matter? Well I don’t think a campaign to secure better pay for jobbing opera critics is likely to be a big feature of the politics of the next year or so. But the existence of SIDness underlines one of the other trends of our times – the increasing segmentation of our society. Where once the income gap between bankers, lawyers, publishers and academics was relatively small, and all might be found living in the same street in, say, Hampstead or north Oxford, now the income differentials within the once narrow stratum of the professional middle class are huge, reflecting, in their own way, the rapidly growing disparity in earnings between those at the top and the bottom of the pile in Britain.

Those who defend this inequality in our wider society say it’s the price we pay for a more open and meritocratic country. But I wonder. One academic once argued that meritocracy, wonderful as it was, allowed those who found themselves earning more and more every year to argue that this was both natural and just. And thus it risked creating a society in which the strong and fortunate, the wealthy and the economically powerful, felt less need than ever to recognise their obligations to the poor, the weak and the economically unproductive but still culturally valuable. Funnily enough, that academic was Toby Young’s father. Young Syndrome it appears has, like Toby, a great pedigree . . .

Any thespians with real substance?

Are we witnessing the end of the Great Theatrical Knight? Surely there will be actors in the future who will still get their K, but I have a very different fear. The type of actor who seems most naturally to deserve a handle before their name, the type of actor who has both a huge personality as well as huge talent, seems to be dying out. We are fortunate still to have Robert Hardy and Timothy West, Anthony Hopkins and Michael Gambon, but among the younger generation the vogue seems to be entirely for matinee idolish, almost epicene figures.

Whether it’s Tom Hollander, Jude Law, John Simm or Sam West, the finest of those in the front rank of acting below the age of 45 seem to lack a certain heft and ballast. The only (almost) young actor I can think of who makes the cut is Simon Russell Beale (now 47). None of his contemporaries, let alone anyone younger, seems to have that indefinable quality which allows him to play careworn kings, grave statesman, men of power or moment, with the naturalness one associates with another generation. I may be missing a great talent out there, and if so, I’d like to know, but it seems that the future of acting now rests with those whose voice and presence suits the intimacy of the camera rather than the open arena of the stage and, in the process, something is being lost.

Socking it to them

I am delighted that Jeremy Paxman has joined in my crusade for proper socks – singling out M&S for particular attention. While Jeremy has decided to attack on a broader front, bringing into the argument the failure of modern underwear to provide proper support where it’s needed, I am overjoyed that he has joined the Campaign for Real Hosiery (Hon Pres, Ming Campbell). Is it too much to hope that Marks will respond with proper, long, ribbed, woollen socks in charcoal grey in every store? If the food can move farther upmarket every year then surely socks don’t have to go in the opposite direction?

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