Characterization
Tony appears to be a very handsome, popular and academically gifted young man, with a typical English middle-class background. He plays cruel games with his family and friends, in particular those closest to him, his girlfriend Michelle (April Pearson) and best friend Sid (Mike Bailey). In "Sid", he displays his love for "control and manipulation" and fondness for the unpredictability of the universe, comparing the lives of those around to him to the functions of subatomic particles. In the Unseen Skins episode "The Cat & The Duck", Michelle characterises Tony as like ice, "cold and transparent."
Tony's sexual encounters are supposedly vast. In "Michelle", Jal Fazer (Larissa Wilson) is able to recall a long list of his conquests. Michelle later puts to Abigail Stock (Georgina Moffat) that he "fucks everyone... including boys." In "Maxxie & Anwar", Tony attempts an oral tryst with his gay friend Maxxie (Mitch Hewer). Tony does not specify a sexual orientation but he says to Maxxie that he simply wants "to try something new". In a psychology lesson, he equates sex with power and his lust for both is portrayed in his presentation. An aspect of his subconscious (portrayed as a college headmaster) refers to him as "polysexual", in series two's "Tony" episode. Bryan Elsley characterizes Tony's attempt to seduce Maxxie as an exploration of the character's sexual fluidity; in season one of the American adaptation, Maxxie's character is replaced by the lesbian character Tea (Sofia Black D'Elia), and her sexual fluidity is substituted for Tony's. In the British series, Tony fits the older television and film archetype of the "narcissistic, controlling, and stereotypically sociopathic 'bad bisexual'".
Tony's reading habits give insight into his personality. In "Tony", the book he reads in the bathroom is La Nausée by Jean-Paul Sartre, a novel about existentialism and defining oneself. In "Sid", he is shown reading Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a book which challenges existing moral values. In "Maxxie and Anwar" he reads Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a book about a young girl struggling with her homosexuality. In the "Tony" episode of series 2, he is seen reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, while sitting on the train.
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