North London Food & Culture

Sue Tilley on how the Regent’s Park Estate inspired new high camp show

Cult performer Scottee is back next week with a festive revue, Camp (on the Estate). So he asked his Aunty Sue - Sue Tilley of Lucian Freud's 'Benefits Supervisor Resting' fame - to write a piece for us about a much-loved area now threatened by HS2

Scottee and Japans Smile
All smiles: Scottee and Japan’s People

Next week a pretty damn special show is taking place at the Dick Collins Hall, the Roundhouse’s off site venue on the Regent’s Park Estate.

Running from Dec 11-14, Camp (on the Estate) is, says award-winning Kentish Town-born performer Scottee, the “last hurrah” for a hall threatened by the current plans proposed by the government’s HS2 plans. Not only that, the surrounding Regent’s Park Estate is also set to be demolished, displacing thousands of people.

The Dick Collins Hall ladies
The Dick Collins Hall ladies

But for now, the mood is one of celebration. Camp (on the Estate) is a special festive edition of cult performer Scottee’s now infamous variety showcase featuring “the world’s leading show-offs” including Jonny Woo and Bourgeois & Maurice, Bryony Kimmings and in-house dance troupe Japan’s People (pictured).

And exclusively for us, he asked his Aunty Sue – that’s no less than Sue Tilley of Lucian Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Resting fame – to write a piece about their much-loved area.


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Just who is Sue Tilley? An author, model and manager at the jobcentre in Tottenham, her life changed when she met Leigh Bowery, one of London’s most notorious performance artists, back in 1982 (she was later fictionalized in Boy George’s 2002 musical Taboo as a character named Big Sue).

"Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" Lucian Freud
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, by Lucian Freud

In 1990, Bowery introduced Sue to painter Lucian Freud.

Over four years in the early 1990s, she posed nude for him and, in 2008, one of his portraits of her sold for $34 million at Christie’s Fine Arts Auction House in New York City – making it the most expensive painting by a living artist ever sold.

A writer in her own right (read her book, Leigh Bowery: The Life and Times of an Icon), without further ado here she is on life on the Regent’s Park Estate – the boyfriends, the lovers, the lodgers – and its colourful cast of extras, from Molly Parkin to Bananarama to Daniel Craig.

Memories of Regent’s Park Estate – by Sue Tilley

On top of the world: Sue Tilley
On top of the world: Sue Tilley in 2013

I arrived at Augustus House in 1982. We had wrecked our previous home’s bathroom at a party and when I rang the housing association to tell them, they said a council flat was available. So I moved in with my friend Rics, the first of a cavalcade of flatmates and lodgers.

We were thrilled, it was near the West End and several friends lived very nearby. Someone told us it was known as Animal House due to the difficult tenants; I never saw any of them, but on consideration we could have been the animals, having visitors all time of day and night, playing loud music and holding gatherings several times a week.

As we were so near the Camden Palace up to 15 people would assemble at mine, boozing on cheap drinks from the supermarket and watching all the pop videos that had been recorded that week. Or we would go to Taboo congregating on the corner of Hampstead Road and waiting for the welcome yellow light of a taxi. The neighbours would look on in horror as Leigh Bowery and Trojan tumbled out of the lift.

Leigh often stayed over and used to throw things of mine he didn’t like onto the roof of the nursery outside, or would climb over the balcony railings just to freak me out.

Rics left to shack up with his girlfriend in Camden Town, so the ballet dancer Michael Clark moved in. I would come home from work and find Mark E Smith from The Fall and his wife Brix sitting in the very sparsely decorated lounge. One Sunday night after one of Michael’s performances we had a party and had to eject Molly Parkin who had got stuck behind the fridge and kept asking why we had such a huge flat. I can only imagine she thought we lived in the whole block.

The next lodger was a handsome straight boy called Luke and there was a constant line of attractive, slightly barmy, girls phoning and knocking at the door at all hours; on one occasion I caught him with one tied to the balcony.

Then Vaughn Toulouse, singer of the hit Is Vic There? moved onto the sofa in the front room so we were very cramped. Luke worked in the building trade and often brought home things that he had scavenged including some blue neon lights.

no pramsAt this point I was working at the Jobcentre in St Pancras Way, The Flynn twins (Michael and Martin) came in and we got talking and discovered that they lived across the road in Mackworth.

“Oh my God, you don’t live in the flat with the blue lights, do you? We always wondered who lived there.”

We became good friends and Martin was a great source of local knowledge, telling me how there used to be an ice store for the posh houses in Regent’s Park under Cumberland Market. Many years later Michael moved in with me.

I loved popping to the shops in Stanhope Parade and one of my favourite sights was the very bow-legged greengrocer marching up and down in a very tatty blond wig pretending to be 80s pop star Marilyn.

The parties and fun continued over the years. My generation got older but I met loads of the new generation of club kids and was thrilled when Scottee and his boyfriend James moved in opposite. I loved them coming over, cooking their tea, gossiping and keeping up with their latest exploits.

The gatherings continued and I remember one night when Mark from Westlife and Skin from Skunk Anasie sung Happy Birthday to Scottee at three in the morning dressed in a selection of Leigh’s old clothes as we sat around watching MTV; no need to record pop now as its got its own channels.

I finally took the major decision to move over to east London after 30 years on the estate. As Scottee helped me pack up it was like leaving a lifetime of memories behind, all those fun nights, all that misbehaviour, all the friends that I had lost (RIP Vaughn Toulouse and Michael Flynn), the night that Daniel Craig came round, the boyfriends, the lovers, the lodgers, Bananarama dancing in my bedroom, broadcasting vans waiting outside the day the Lucian painting sold, turning against Katie Derham on live TV from the grass outside the block, film crews lugging their stuff into the flat.

But because of my work with Lucian, there are many images of my flat saved forever in newspaper photos, TV interviews and even in a Sam Taylor Wood portrait.

Regent’s Park Estate you will always be in my heart.

Buy tickets for Camp (on the Estate) here. Price £15 or £8 for anyone who lives in social housing in Camden. Click for more about Scottee.

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