Clapton Pond Blog

Is Your Safe House Clean?

Aggie Mackenzie, star of How Clean Is Your House?, has disclosed she used to work for MI6:

"I thought, ooh, I could be Miss Moneypenny...There was I, this Highland working class girl, with heather still growing out of my ears, in amongst all these Sloane Rangers. I stayed there for two years, by the end of which time I was feeling differently about it. I was seeing things I really didn't want to see. I was working in a much more operational branch of MI6, working alongside MI5 and other sections doing Northern Irish stuff. I was privy to a lot of information that I didn't really want to see and I thought, do you know what, I don't really want to be a part of this."

Aggie lives in Stoke Newington. She can come and clean my house, if she wants. Did I mention that there used to be a rat under my sink? Now read on.

That Amy Winehouse

From NME:

"Two Londoners have been arrested on a charge of conspiring to supply drugs, their customers alleged to include Amy Winehouse."

They're not from Hackney, surely.

Cocaine Bust, Allegedly

From The Daily Telegraph:

"The son of the security minister, Admiral Lord West, has been arrested for alleged drugs offences...The Daily Telegraph has been told by sources that the 25-year-old had been drinking in a nightclub in Hackney, east London, on Jan 6. He was allegedly approached by a drug dealer who asked if he would like to buy cocaine. Mr West allegedly replied that he would and the two men went outside to a cashpoint to conclude the deal."

Eeek. Now read on.

Hello, Leona!

The chart-topper says:

"I knew it was hard, and that I was just a Hackney girl, and that it's a big world out there."

Just a Hackney girl? Just?

Marc Bolan

The star of T. Rex died thirty years ago today. The son of a Jewish van-driver, he was born and grew up at 25 Stoke Newington Common where a plaque has been mounted in his honour. A Claptonian friend of mine's three young childen like dancing to I Love To Boogie. People, he's one of ours.

Helen Shapiro

She used to be a pop star, you know. And she grew up round here. Want to know more?

Dr Who & Hackney

We all love Doctor Who in our house and we all love his new assistant Martha Jones, especially as - like all the best people - she's a product of Hackney. The one thing I don't like about Martha's arrival is the "love interest" aspect of her relationship with the Doc, a theme I explore in this piece for The Guardian today. But guess what? While researching the Guardian piece I discovered another Hackney connection. The first ever Dr Who episode, shown in 1963, was partly set within the borough's boundaries. The Doctor's first assistant was his granddaughter Susan Foreman who attended a fictitious Shoreditch secondary school called Coal Hill. Such was her unearthly brilliance in the classroom that a couple of her teachers followed her one day. She went into a Shoreditch scrapyard where they found her talking to an eccentric old man in a police box that was - wait for it! - really, really big on the inside! What's more, the Doctor returned to the scrapyard in 1985 and 1988. I've always said that Hackney is the centre of the universe. How much more proof do you need?

Xiaolu Guo

It says here that:

"Cute isn't the word for Xiaolu Guo; acute definitely is. As the ideas tumble and swerve, her conversation feels as vivid as the brightly patterned crimson silk she wears. Tom Waits and Miles Davis do their thing in the background of a flat in a largely Bangladeshi block, set in that urban scrapyard where Hackney topples into Bethnal Green. She says, with a laugh, that 'It's the most ugly area in the whole of London. Much more ugly than the village I come from in China.'"

Stlli, when she's won the Orange Prize she'll be able to move up here.

Dangerous Driving

Heard about this handsome lad? Well, you should have. After all, he's been here:

"'Last December, my son Paul and I took Lewis to the Springfield Club in Hackney [east London],' says Sir Jackie Stewart."

OK, so he's only been here once. Just thought I'd mention it. Look, I was leaving anyway...

Be Afraid...

Seems we had that Beverley Hughes round our school yesterday. Funny, I thought she only came out after dark.