Chesney and the Zombie

Warming Up

8022/20963

So soon after the 8000 entry, it's Warming Up's 22nd birthday. For those of you new to the blog who are minded to start from the beginning, it all began in 2002 when I lived in Balham and it was only 3 years since I'd been on TV and a matter of months since Time Gentlemen Please series 2!

You can then get an incident or thought from every single day until today (and I might be wrong, but I think tomorrow too at least). Only six years now from saying that blog is 28 years old and then the joke is complete and I can stop.

Happy Birthday Warming Up.

I don't want to move house again in my life and I don't want to live in London, but if I ever did I've always fancied living in one of those huge mansions that surround Regents Park. Easy access to the zoo, the tube is just round the corner and you can walk to most places in Central London pretty. Also you have a huge park on your doorstep and don't need to do the gardening. But would I be able to afford to buy a central London mansion. My guess was probably not.

That guess was confirmed today when this 7 bedroom house (plus mews house) was mentioned in my substack feed. It costs £20 million. And that's a reduced price. It's also only leasehold so you'd need to know how long the lease was before you committed, but given there is planning permission to extend this Grade 1 listed house, I am guessing they're giving you a few decades before they snatch it back off of you. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/154980854#/?channel=RES_BUY

I was sad that my dream to live in a huge mansion near a zoo (but also good for the tube) will never come true. Some might argue I don't need 9 bedrooms, space for 8 cars, a gym and dining room and weird hard-to-mow garden and that it's ridiculous that anyone can afford to buy a place like that. But I disagree with those people. I want to live in a mansion where all my neighbours are cunts (or live in Russia and are cunts) and I need all those rooms. Plus it would make it much easier to get into RHLSTP on a Monday.

Then it struck me. I now have over 20,000 followers on Bluesky and they are all real and not bots and recently engaged with me. If we all put in £1000 each we could buy it together. That's so little money to co-own a mansion in the heart of London. Sure we wouldn't all be able to live there at once, but a night in a hotel in London costs about £200 and if we turned a couple of the superfluous rooms into bedrooms we could easily sleep 10, 20 or maybe even 50 people a night. Even keeping the numbers low we'd all be able to sleep there once every two years, which means five times a decade, by which time we will be saving money on hotels. After another decade we'd all be £1000 up. At which point we could sell the house for probably £40 million and walk away with £2000 each. 10 free nights in a mansion in London, plus £1000 profit

I might have to take into account a few other costs, like furniture, utility bills, council tax, repairs and someone to change the sheets every night and run the complicated booking system. But that will be nothing compared to the £20 million house we all own. Also 8-10 people can park their cars there every day, which is another significant saving.

I'd be prepared to run the whole thing if I got to live full time in the mews house and no one else could come in there. It doesn't seem worth doing for just £1000 profit - or leastways the free accommodation is payment enough, so I'd suggest that we all enter a tontine, where the last person alive inherits the house. That will certainly add a certain frisson to staying there. Will one of your mysterious flatmates kill you in the night? It will certainly be worth their while. You'd better kill them before they kill you. It's not as relaxing as staying in a hotel, but if you kill all the others early on, then you can relax and enjoy the whole house for the rest of the day.

Some people said it seemed like a time-share, but I think it's very different.Alternatively 20 people who were going to spend £1 million each to live in a crappy flat on the outskirts of London could divide this place up into 20 living areas that would be bigger than the flats and much more convenient for the zoo. And if they were all hot singles then they could hook up and marry their fortunes together. In fact if all 20 of them got married then that would be perfect. As long as I am one of the 20 and the other 19 are attractive and open-minded women. My current family could live with me in the mews.

Anyway, just spitballing here. Let me know if you're in and we can get the ball rolling.

Two more lovely RHLSTPs tonight, but once again a very disappointingly small (but excellent) crowd in. I knew we had a great double bill on our hands and Amy Gledhill and Chesney Hawkes did not disappoint. Amy told a story of drunkenly going to a Chesney Hawkes gig several years ago dressed as a zombie and then getting up on stage. Chesney did not remember this, amazingly, but Amy found a photo and they recreated it in the dressing room.

Chesney is very down to earth and up for a laugh and I had a good chat with him about our shared experience of being a failed 1990s superstar (ahem). He is only four years younger than me, but I look like I might be his dad in the photo.