The Knowhere Guide

Local Heroes in Highbury and Islington, Greater London*

Highbury and Islington, Greater London Famous Residents

Cringing Cult of Celebrity (Famous residents and ex-residents.)

• Daniel Defoe, the father of modern journalism. His place of residence now a Minicab Office! William Blake, poet. And what about Abney Park Cemetery. a great place to walk, look at the fantasitc monuments, pick blackberries and look at the wild flowers and reseach ancestors. (I'm doing a bit of research on London's lost villages) hence my interest)
• Tony Blair, Dido, or should they be the other way round?
• The bird from Swing Out Sister occasionally pops into the Centuria Bar, as did Ali G (usually with his parents). Also Denise Van Outen has been spotted on Upper street going to the gym.
• Recently spotted Liza Tarbuck swinging her Terrier Doggy bag whilst singing to herself outside the Pound shop on Blackstock rd - the girl has style
• An up-and-coming celebrity in Highbury is a chap called FatSadMan. He is fictional and lives at fatsadman.com On occasions he can be quite entertaining, this year he is writing his diary for the year 2000 and posting it month-by-month at fatsadman.com (a non-commercial website).
• Loads of famous residents: Douglas Adams (wrote Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy), Sue Pollard, Clive Anderson and tons more. Seen Gina McKee, Kenneth Branagh, Griff Rhys Jones and loads more.
• sue pollard ( from hi-de-hi), jarvis cocker, kathy burke and that bird that plays biancas sister in eastenders (sonia jackson)
• Stephen Fry, Sue Pollard off Hi-di-Hi,
• Loads of other people. Thousands more peole who think they are (or should be!) but actually aren't!
• Islington is home to literally hundreds of famous and infamous people. Current residents include Tony Blair, Griff Rhys-Jones, Sade, Clive Anderson, Pauline Quirke and Roland Gift, to name but a few. Going back a bit, Lenin lived here and the Old Red Lion in St. John Street was his regular.

Buskers, Street Entertainers

• Baby face and barry leech
• There's a bloke who sits outside The Body Shop, opposite Angel tube station, and sings to you through a traffic cone as you walk past. I think technically he might fall into the category 'creative homeless person hoping for a quid' but I've never seen anyone else 'play' one of these!
• the guy you mention in sainsburys car park is known locally as "busker john"
• Guy in Sainsbury's car park has been there for decades singing same mix of Dylan etc. He's a bit half-gone but deserves reward for longevity and doggedness alone

The Knowhere Guide started out as a list of places to skateboard in the UK. It is a compilation of (unedited) information and views supplied by users like yourself. It is not a conventional tourist guide!

In most cases, the information in each section has been submitted by more than one contributor (the credits at the bottom of the page list some, but not all, of the contributors) and some of it dates back to the 1970s.

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Credits

Last updated: 2007-12-06