her shadow that our relationship deteriorated", Young said in 2005. Young moved to New York City shortly afterwards to work for Vanity Fair accepting an invitation from its editor, Graydon Carter. In the time he wrote for the magazine he contributed 3,000 words, but was paid $85,000. After being sacked by Vanity Fair in 1998, he stayed in New York for two more years, working as a columnist for the New York Press, before returning to the UK in 2000. A memoir of these years, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, was published in 2001. Following Jack Davenport, Young performed in the West End one-man stage adaptation of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People in 2004. Theatre critic Lyn Gardner gave it a one star review commenting that "The curious thing about this is that Young's day job is as theatre critic of the Spectator. You would think he might have developed some respect for the job that actors do. Clearly not. But then, neither does he appear to have picked up any tips on acting along the way." A review in The Stage disagreed, saying "Despite Young's previous thespic experience being the only student at Anna Scher’s drama school not to get a part in Grange Hill and having been fired after a week as an extra on the film Another Country, he gives a thoroughly convincing performance as himself…". The Evening Standard also praised his performance. In 2005, he co-wrote (with fellow Spectator journalist Lloyd Evans) a sex farce about the David Blunkett/Kimberley Quinn intrigue and the "Sextator" affairs of Boris Johnson and Rod Liddle called Who's the Daddy? It was named as the Best New Comedy at the 2006 Theatregoers' Choice Awards. The following year A Right Royal Farce, Young and Evans' play about sexual antics of the British royal family was poorly received by the press. Young said of the play "It was an unqualified disaster". It received scathing reviews from the Evening Standard and The Guardian. From 2002 to 2007, Young wrote a restaurant column for the Evening Standard and later a restaurant column for The Independent on Sunday. In addition to serving as a judge on Top Chef, Young has competed in the Channel 4 TV series Come Dine with Me, appeared as one of the panel of food critics in the 2008 BBC Two series Eating with the Enemy and served