Celebrity Sightings

Celebrities spotted in Crouch End since we have lived here:
Sean Hughes (in O’s Thai Café)
Juliet Stevenson (crossing the road near the Clocktower)
Cliff Parisi (Minty from EastEnders) (always in Florian’s; alas (?) we missed him opening the Hornsey Vale Community Centre Christmas fair)
Nigel Harman (in the gym)
Stephen Merchant (on a W3 bus)
Dermot Murnaghan (in the gym, buying a paper from the stand outside KFC and most recently with his family in the kindergarten zoo that is Monkey Nuts on a Saturday lunchtime)
Eve Matheson (walking along Weston Park)
Iain Lee (walking along Weston Park), who claims Banners to be his favourite café in the whole world.
One of the McGann brothers, the middle one on the poster for Tom, Dick and Harry, possibly Joe (at the Nationwide cashpoint on the Broadway and outside the Fairwind Trading Company).
Steve McFadden (on Priory Gardens near Highgate tube)
The guy who plays Danny Moon in EastEnders (pissed up outside the pub on Crouch End Hill)
Bob Dylan (headlining at the Fleadh festival in Finsbury Park June 2004).Though all we saw was a crumbly old bloke in a hat and shades hiding at the back of the stage behind a keyboard, croaking out songs and refusing to acknowledge his audience. It could have been anyone really. According to Crouch End legend, Bob once ended up sitting drinking coffee in the lounge at a plumber called Dave’s house, thinking he was actually visiting Dave Stewart (see below). However, Time Out claimed this week that he was put off buying a house in the area after being snubbed by waiting staff at an Indian restaurant and Banners.

Crouch End celebrities whom we haven’t seen:
Fran Healy from Travis, who once brought the band along to play at the Stationers Park summer fête to an audience of around 100 people. It must have been a welcome break from the usual fête fodder of dreadful teenage grunge bands. The other week Mr Healy was also reported to have given a further impromptu performance on the stage in Viva Viva in Hornsey.
Simon Pegg, who filmed much of SHAUN OF THE DEAD in a house on Nelson Road and in our local corner shop on Weston Park (hereafter known as the Zombie Shop).
Bindi Harris, daughter of Rolf Harris. Rolf Harris has used the Hearts & Flowers florist’s on Weston Park at some point, because they have a thank you letter from him pinned to the wall.
Madness, who used to rehearse in a house on Park Road South before anyone had heard of them.
Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox, probably the most famous of all Crouch End’s residents - though if it counts, our mate Tony used to play jazz with their flatmate, and a woman who painted our windows this summer (coincidentally another Annie with her own rock’n’roll aspirations) used to hang out with Stewart and Lennox before they became the Tourists. Apparently, in their kitchen, the drugs were plentiful and free-flowing, which Annie the painter thought was a good thing.

By Royal Appointment III

I have gone off the Royal Free. I take back every word of praise I lavished in its general direction a few months ago. Today I had yet another appointment with the thyroid consultant. This time, the clinic was running an hour late. When I did finally see a doctor, he clearly hadn’t looked up a single thing about my case and just sat there leafing through past letters in my folder of notes before deciding to send me for another ultrasound scan and more blood tests and to see me in three months’ time. He asked me practically nothing about my symptoms and the only blood results he had to give me were three months out of date.
So I made a follow-up appointment in the clinic for the end of January and then walked downstairs to the ultrasound department to make an appointment for a scan of my neck. Previously, I have gone straight to the reception desk and they have given me the first available appointment – usually in a few weeks’ time, but nonetheless a fixed a date in the diary that I knew that I would be able to make. Today, however, I had to take a numbered ticket in reception and then sit and wait my turn for 20 minutes in order to book my appointment. When I did get to see a receptionist, I was then told that they couldn’t allocate me an appointment as each case now had to be looked over and judged on its urgency by a senior radiographer. Once it had been assessed, I would be sent an appointment by post. The receptionist said that it was likely to be March 2006 before I would get an appointment – not much use for my follow-up thyroid appointment at the end of January. I told the receptionist this and he said that there was nothing he could do other than make a note of this date. And that if the scan appointment, when it came through, was after the end of January, I would have to get my GP to write to the thyroid consultant to try and get the ultrasound department to bring the date forward. What a fucking farce. So instead of employing one person to allocate ultrasound appointments, they now have to use two, and I now have to waste not only my GP’s but also the consultant’s time in order to get the ultrasound department to carry out an instruction that the consultant has already given. I will also have to spend hours in a phone queue to the appointments department at the Royal Free to get them to move the follow-up thyroid appointment if the scan cannot be done beforehand. This kind of thing leaves me speechless. I don’t know who has taken over the management at the Royal Free and introduced all these new time-wasting bureaucratic policies, but they clearly have no appreciation of medical priorities and don’t have a fucking clue.