Sophie Ellis-Bextor's guide to London: parties on the canal, feasts at Brutto and a rummage in Beyond Retro
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West London. I live with my husband [Richard Jones, bassist with The Feeling], four of our kids and six cats. I’m also 10 minutes away from my mum and our eldest boy, Sonny, who lives down the road and 10 minutes in a slightly different direction from my brother. So we’re all pretty close! My sister is in London, too.
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As a Londoner it hardly ever happens, but sometimes if Richard and I do a DJ gig, we spend the night in a hotel and I just love the decadence of it. It’s very cool, waking up and finding yourself in Soho, or the City, or Covent Garden. You go and get breakfast and it makes you see the city in a different way. Very glamorous.
Above The World’s End pub opposite Camden Tube in the late Nineties and I thought it was the bee’s knees. It was right in the epicentre of everything. I was 18 years old and I was super excited to be somewhere like that. Singing! I left school after I finished my A-levels, and I went straight into being in a band. I’d had the odd Saturday girl job, worked in hairdressers, worked in a shop, but in terms of what you might call a profession, it was singing — I signed to Mercury when I was 18.
You want somewhere a little bit vibey, some nice food and a drink. I always think, go somewhere there’s a market. So, Portobello Market, around Portobello Road. My first date with Richard was over 20 years ago, though!. My local coffee shop, where I get a coffee every day after the school run — it’s punctuation for my day. It says well done for getting up early, getting all the kids where they need to be. I also adore my local Japanese restaurant called Makoto in Chiswick. And Beyond Retro near Oxford Circus — I always find something fun, it’s quite inexpensive and I like a little rummage. Westfield, for some proper shiny shopping, is always super convenient as we’re not too far from Shepherd’s Bush. But after a while I start thinking, get me out of here. My local cinema, Chiswick Cinema on the high road, is so handy because I can walk there.
