Tim Lott

Tim Lott, Kensal Green resident and award-winning author of White City Blues, gives Kate Crockett his unique insight into the changing face of Notting Hill 

Above: Author Tim Lott

Outside St Helen’s Foodstore in St Helen’s Gardens, W10, Tim Lott is rummaging through his bag in search of a lighter. ‘It has too many pockets,’ he moans, opening and closing the zips and poppers. I empathise, I say. I have the same problem with my handbag. ‘I’ve had this for years,’ he continues. ‘I was way ahead of the curve on manbags.’

Tim tells me he has taken up smoking again since The Ban – ‘It’s a very teenage instinct – because somebody told me not to’ – which explains why, on this rather fresh autumn morning, he has requested we sit outside to do our interview.

Tim has just cycled over from Soho where he’s been to see his younger brother, Jack, a hairdresser. Jack is also Tim’s neighbour in Kensal Green and – though born in Southall – Tim, Jack and their older brother Jeff (who now lives in New Orleans) have a long-standing connection with Notting Hill.
 
‘My dad was a greengrocer in Notting Hill Gate,’ Tim explains. ‘All three brothers used to work there with Dad. Of course, it was a very different Notting Hill Gate then,’ he continues. ‘But a lot of the places are still there that I
used to deliver to 40 years ago: Geales, the Uxbridge Arms, the Sun in Splendour. I think the greengrocer is now a phone shop – Phones 4 U or something.’

Years later, Tim ended up back in Notting Hill ‘by accident’. ‘I was bullied into it by my girlfriend at the time,’ he explains. ‘I wanted to go and live in Hampstead but she was cooler than me and said we should live in Notting Hill on Portobello Road. That was 1983. I said, “What do you want to live in Portobello for? It’s a slum.” But she said it was going to become a cool place! Even my dad said it was becoming very trendy but I said, “no it’s horrible” – because it was horrible!’

And Notting Hill is where Tim remained: living for many years in a ‘terrible’ flat just off Talbot Road – ‘It smelt of curry from downstairs; it had music coming from upstairs; it was depressing’ – and then a townhouse at ‘the scummy end of Oxford Gardens’. Mind you, both properties mushroomed in value as Notting Hill turned trendy.

‘I remember very clearly when that happened,’ he says. ‘I had started going out with my wife Rachel [they were married in June]. One New Year’s Eve we went to Bali Sugar in All Saint’s Road – and we cycled up there – it was snowing and we were in these scummy clothes. When we arrived, everyone there was in black Armani and we thought, “f***king hell”. It was that moment we realised it had changed!’

Now settled in Kensal Green with Rachel and their two daughters (his two older daughters live with his ex-wife in Notting Hill), Tim loves NW10.

‘It’s a really great area to live,’ he enthuses. ‘For anyone with a family, it’s just great. It makes you realise how simple it is to get a community right: just those little terraced streets, a school, a cafe, and that’s enough to create a community where everyone knows each other.

‘Everybody goes to Gracelands – it’s a terrific place,’ he continues. ‘You go in there and you know everybody.’ This summer Graceland’s owner, Tiane Wilson, bid to be a character in his next novel at Princess Frederica’s School Fair. ‘She paid £150, I think,’ he explains. ‘It’s really nice: local cafe owner bids to be a character in local author’s novel – when I get round to writing it!’ 

And that brings us to Tim’s latest novel, Fearless, which was published this summer. A fairytale-cum-political satire, Fearless is his first book for children and adults and it took seven years to come to fruition. ‘It’s kind of like a fable,’ he explains. ‘The closest I think it comes to is Animal Farm.’

‘I started writing it in 2000 which is just after my first novel [White City Blues] came out and I wrote it for my god daughter. I started telling her the story and she asked me to write it down for her – then it was only a 10-minute story but I just kept going and it turned into this nightmare because I just couldn’t stop.

‘It was a mess but I knew that somewhere buried in it there was a really good book – but I didn’t know where – and so I spent the next three or four years writing and rewriting.’

Having won the Whitbread First Novel Award and with another award nomination for his second, Tim thought getting Fearless published was going to be easy. ‘But nobody was interested! My agent didn’t want it, my editor didn’t want it – nobody wanted it!’

Five years later – and with his manuscript having done the rounds of fellow children’s authors Mark Hadden and Jacqueline Wilson for advice – Tim’s novel picked up ‘genius editor’ from Walker Books. 
‘Suddenly, it all came together – Walker published it and put loads behind it and it had a happy ending,’ Tim concludes. ‘I feel really proud of it – it was real act of faith!’

So what next? ‘I’m in what you might call a transitional phase at the moment,’ he smiles. There are various fiction, non-fiction and screenplay projects on the horizon. Not to mention that spa feature he’s writing for Grove!

Fearless is published by Walker Books (£6.99)