North London v South London - The debate

North London sucks | South London sucks

'North London sucks,' argues Michael Hodges…



So what’s wrong with north London? Partly it’s the place (an easy place to get to by black cab, I believe, a service still denied to those of us foolish enough to live beyond the Thames’s swirling waters). Take Parliament Hill. It’s not much more than a hillock compared to the towering peak Greenwich Observatory sits upon. Yet in film, books and plays it is endlessly celebrated.

And Hampstead Village. An obvious target? Yes it is, and all the more reason to attack it. Self-regarding, snobbish, chocolate-box streets, chocolate-box pubs, sanitised and swept free of any vigour or vim. Or Camden Market? A woeful flea market, engineered to offer exotica and the whiff of danger to people who are not really sure about either exotica or the whiff of danger. Here you will encounter the Peruvian Hat, a sort of knitted headwear with ties that hang down at the sides. Fine in the windswept Andes with the chance of snow blowing up from Bolivia and a group of agitated llamas gathering around you with murder in their eyes, but the mark of an arse in an urban environment. Although it is a handy identifier in a fist fight.

Of course hitting people just because they are from north London is wrong. And anyway it’s not the majority of people who live in north London who annoy – there are thousands of people who live useful lives in Tottenham and Barnet – but a particular kind of person who lives in a particular kind of way: the north Londoner. He or she will know the best coffee bars in Milan, yet be unable to name one of south London’s many wonderful pubs.

They will express support for Arsenal football club (never Tottenham), yet know nothing of the game. The contents of their wardrobes will be predominately dark; names like Betty Jackson and Prada will appear there. There is a strong chance of a Japanese print in the downstairs toilet. And you won’t find them in Tottenham either, but in very specific areas: in Belsize Park, in Primrose Hill and in Tufnell Park.

Take Lemonia in Primrose Hill, the house restaurant of the north Londoner. Who could complain about the fantastic Greek food at very reasonable prices, pleasing decor or the friendly service? Certainly not me: move the place to Peckham and I’d be in there every night. No, the problem is the ‘loyal tribe’, as one pro-north London website has it, that uses Lemonia. That’ll be ‘Jude Law, Ewan McGregor, Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Paddy Campbell and the PM and Sarah to name but a few!’ A few? That’s more than enough. They haven’t even mentioned Chris Martin.

If you add the slightly less galling Stephen Fry and Geri Halliwell to the array of north London celebrities, you’ll find it runs the full gamut from classy to common (in south London we have that blonde woman who’s quite funny and, well, that’s about it), yet despite their social differences they all a share a similarly enraging worthiness.

Because north Londoners don’t just eat in Greek restaurants and make odious pop records. They also care deeply about (my capitals) THE LESS FORTUNATE. You know, Tibetans, African people, little seals that get their heads bashed in. Some are even left wing; in fact wealthy north London is packed with socialists. Grand old socialists like Michael Foot, but also less grand, younger socialists who earn £120,000 a year as arts administrators and, strangely, find nothing as hateful and unpleasant as exposure to the working class. The same class, if memory serves, that socialism is suppose to propel to the commanding heights of the economy.

Not in north London it won’t. And even if it did, north Londoners would still benefit, as they dedicate much of their spare time to pretending to be working class.

That is why there are so many ersatz versions of the working man’s caff, from which the actual working man has been eliminated (see ‘socialism’ above), featuring checkerboard tablecloths and organic, free-range versions of real food. The bacon will be hand dried by Wiltshire yeomen, the sausages rolled by Tuscan peasant maids on their inner thighs. The tea will be so fairtrade that several Kenyan villages can now boast a Jacuzzi in each hut thanks to the proceeds. Breakfast will cost £19.47.

However, since they are in the press so often, it is relatively easy to see beyond such lifestyle trappings – along with the pointless recycling, organic wine and other eco-concerned affectations that do little to mitigate the environmental damage wreaked by the Volvo in the driveway – and discover what actually matters to north Londoners.

Hampstead residents Radio 1 DJ Edith Bowman and her boyfriend Tom Smith, of a pop group called Editors, are perhaps archetypal north Londoners. Rather than ‘feeding the world’ or ending communist China’s oppression of the Tibetan people (and how oppressive is it to remove a medieval government run by monks where women hold no power?), their real concern appears to be getting planning permission. In their case, for a basement.

And last year, over in Islington, Derek Draper and Kate Garraway were reported to be ‘delighted’ and ‘excited’ when, after a passionate campaign – at one point Garraway shouted at council officials – they contrived to get planning permission for an extension so their baby could have his own room. The baby, I note, is called Darcey.

However, it’s not the interesting names for their children, or the self-obsession – all those diets, all that idiot yoga, the tantric sex – but the self-righteous hypocrisy of rich north Londoners that is truly unbearable. They want to save the world but still send their children to public school. They claim to be true metropolitans yet cluster in exclusive villages.

This isn’t urban life, it’s a cod bucolic nightmare populated by rampaging egotists who, understandably, would be beaten about the head with yellow murder boards if they ever strayed south of City Hall. This is north London, and it sucks.

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North London sucks | South London sucks