2 Monday June 13 2022 | the timestimes2
Kevin Maher
W
hat did
Chris
Martin from
Coldplay
famously
warble in
Fix You?
Lights will
guide you home? And ignite your
bones? As long as, he should have
added, those particular lights don’t
guide you to the London borough of
Camden, a place, alas, that is home no
more! Yep, Martin has finally cut his
ties with the formerly trendy enclave
of Primrose Hill by selling the home
that he once shared with Gwyneth
Paltrow for £12.5 million. Property
experts estimate about £7 million
profit on the sale, which will doubtless
come in handy when all those
Coldplay residuals from funerals and
weddings eventually dry up.
And yet the real significance here is
the symbolism. Martin is one of the
last celebrity rats to desert that
famously sinking and stinking (more
later) ship known as HMS Life Is So
Much Better in Camden.
Other cowardly rodents include
Kate Moss (left for the Cotswolds last
year), Britpop party animals Noel
Gallagher (moved to Hampshire) and
Meg Mathews (Cornwall), and the
fashion designer Pearl Lowe
(Somerset). Oh, and me. I arrived in
the Cotswolds last year but I moved
out of Camden in 1997. I like to think
that I was ahead of the curve. I was
certainly more perceptive than Maggie
(Emma Appleton), the protagonist of
the must-see millennial melodrama
Everything I Know About Love. In the
opening episode, set in 2012, an
aspiring writer moves into a gal-pad in
Camden and giddily hits the bars,
whereupon a jaded indie rocker
crushes her dreams with, “Renting in
Camden in 2012? Whatever you’re
looking for’s already left.”
Not to be pedantic, but I would
argue that whatever anyone might
have been looking for was already
gone by the mid-to-late Nineties, and
had definitely disappeared by the time
I packed my suitcase. I have grim
memories from that time. Sitting in
filthy pubs and getting elbowed in the
ribs by over-excitable music fans
because Gaz from Supergrass was
passing by. Or traipsing over to the
Dublin Castle because someone had
told someone else that Morrissey hadSo long,
farewell,
Andrew?
You know the scene in
The Sound of Music
when the nuns get
together to discuss the
professional fate of
troublesome novitiate
Maria? Hint: the
accompanying track is
How Do You Solve a
Problem Like Maria?
Well, according to “a
senior Palace source”,
it seems that similar
pow-wows have been
taking place between
the Queen and “senior
members” of the royal
family to discuss the
future of the Duke of
York. Yep, the song
writes itself: How Do
You Solve a Problem
Like Prince Andrew?
“He’d out-pester any
pest/ Drive a hornet
from its nest/ And he’s
got this sweating
problem, although
he’s very good at
remembering specific
outings to Pizza
Express in Woking.”
One of the most
eye-catching pieces of
information, however,
to emerge from these
alleged meetings is the
suggestion that Andrew
could be relocated to
Scotland. What? Like
nuclear waste?
I’m sure Nicola
Sturgeon will be
thrilled. You thought
the Union was shaky
before? Just wait until
Andy comes rolling up
over the border in a
vacuum-sealed
juggernaut.The long
and short
of dating
it. I have previously
been (unfairly)
slammed for holding
allegedly sizeist views
and for apparently
ridiculing “small men”
from my ostensibly
lofty perch of 6ft 2in. So
I will simply write, in
the most inoffensiveway, that a new book by
the former Google data
scientist Seth Stephens-
Davidowitz highlights
research on dating
which found that a man
who is 5ft 6in and earns
£189,000 a year is less
desirable than a man
who is 6ft and earns£50,000. To which I can
only respond that, yes,
those findings are
incredibly obvious.
For a start, the little
guy’s going to be below
the table for most of the
time. How’s she going
to get to know him?
Booster seat, probably.I’m not going to take
the bait. It’s not worthturned up unannounced with Liam
Gallagher and Patsy Kensit. Or cycling
up to Primrose Hill with only shekels
in my pockets in the vain hope of
getting caught up in the magical
vapour trail of Jude Law, Sadie Frost
and the cast of Blue Juice, who might
suddenly turn around and say, “Hey,
we’re having a party over at ours.
Ewan and Rhys are coming, so is
Sienna and that one from The Big
Breakfast [Donna Air]! Why don’t you
bop by, and bring all your friends!
This is Camden after all!”
And I did some parties too. Dreadful
things run by (unmentionable)
production companies where VIPs
snorted cocaine from balcony seats
and everyone had that slightly crazed
look on their faces, like shocked
toddlers smiling but on the verge of
tears. It didn’t help that I never slept
during that time. I lived above the
infamous World’s End pub, the place
where Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright
met up while making their seminal TV
series Spaced. It was hell. Just the sheer
noise. The very specific stink (I call it
Eau de Beer, Vomit and Fumes). The
fights. The chaos. The human detritus.
I eventually snapped and moved to a
quiet flat-share in Notting Hill (I
know! From the frying pan... !). Still,
for me the move was as significant as
a rooftop rescue during the fall of
Saigon. I’ve mostly avoided Camden
ever since. Wouldn’t eat there. Don’t
even drive through it. Still, I’m happy
for the glitterati. Took their time, but
they’ve finally, belatedly, caught up.Chris Martin selling up
in Camden? I was ahead
of the Primrose Hill set
The life my
sister’s family
built is gone.
It disappeared
overnight
War led Dr Waheed Arian
to flee Afghanistan. Now
his siblings are scattered
across the globe. There
was no future for them at
home, he tells Hilary Rose
W
hen the
home
secretary
first
announced
plans to
deport
refugees to
Rwanda, even the United Nations
expressed concern. With the first flight
due to take off for Rwanda tomorrow,
Prince Charles has reportedly
described the plan as “appalling”.
“He’s right, it is appalling,” says
Dr Waheed Arian, an NHS doctor and
former refugee. “Appalling is a strong
word, but lives are at risk here.
Hopefully it will help to shine a light
and make a difference. These are
vulnerable people, fleeing conflict and
trying to find safety and this is how we
treat them? It’s inhumane. I think of
my own journey coming here as a
15-year-old, starting from zero. I
think a lot of this comes down to
the weaponisation and politicisation
of refugees.”
He fears that for the government,
the refugees crossing the Channel in
boats aren’t so much a humanitarian
disaster as a political opportunity. For
the West, the withdrawal from
Afghanistan, and the chaos that
ensued at Kabul airport, was political.
For Arian, now 38, it was personal:
most of his family were still there.
“One minute my brother’s working
his shift, a paediatrician in a hospital
in Kabul; the next minute he’s told,
‘Your name is on the list to be flown
out, you have two hours to pack
your bags.’ They had to find formula
milk for the baby, because who
knows if they’ll be fed, and say
goodbye to my dad, who they lived
with and looked after. He said, ‘Dad,
shall I leave?’ And Dad said, ‘Yes,
I don’t see any future for you here.’ ”Since then, with the refugee
spotlight turning to Ukraine, the
situation in Afghanistan has
deteriorated. Ninety-five per cent of
the population doesn’t have access to
enough food, including his six sisters
in Kabul and their father, who has told
Arian that children are put up for sale
on street corners by parents who can’t
afford to feed them. Afghans like his
family face a choice of leave or die.
There is no route to safety that is legal
or safe, and no future that offers any
hope if they remain.
“If my brother had to come to the
UK he would have come via a similar
route. There is no other way, no
official route. He could have been in
the Channel and we could have lost
him. If he’d arrived here, on that route,
which the government says is not on
for refugees, he would have been sent
to Rwanda.”
Does he think that Ukrainians are
treated differently from Afghans?
“They certainly are. Ukrainians
deserve all the compassionate
treatment they get. They are treated
the way refugees should be treated. But
I think that’s discrimination that we
need to address.
“We have to have compassion for
everybody equally, it shouldn’t be
limited to one group. There are so
many others who need our help. They
shouldn’t be sent to Rwanda. They
shouldn’t be treated differently. They
shouldn’t be punished because of the
route they took to find safety.”
Arian himself arrived as a refugee in
1999, on his own, aged 15. His parents,
despairing of any future for him in
their war-torn country, sold
everything they had to buy him a
plane ticket out. The UK was picked at
random. He arrived with $100 in his
pocket, a dream of becoming a doctor,
and next to no education after aGwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin,
formerly of Primrose Hill, London