Will Young
Will Young
William Robert "Will" Youngis an English singer-songwriter and actor who came to prominence after winning the 2002 inaugural series of the British music contest Pop Idol, making him the first winner of the worldwide Idol franchise. His double A-sided debut single "Anything Is Possible" / "Evergreen" was released two weeks after the show's finale and became the fastest-selling debut single in the UK. Young also came in fifth place in World Idol performing his single "Light My Fire"...
ProfessionPop Singer
Date of Birth20 January 1979
CityWokingham, England
In case I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I want to make something clear - I am not a snowflake. I am not a sweet, infantilising symbol of fragility and life. I am a strong, fierce, flawed adult woman. I plan to remain that way, in life and in death.
Disability doesn't make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does.
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?
I wouldn't describe myself as a master of anything.
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.
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'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.
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.
I miss being fawned over by restaurateurs and chefs.
America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.
There's no reason why you can't deliver a grammar-school curriculum to an all-ability intake.
The moment I'm perceived to be even a tiny bit successful, my career will go down the pan.
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.
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.