An unbelievable but true story told to me by Eddie the Estate Agent, who was working in central London at the time.
I opened the door and ushered in my client and his two teenage daughters. We were in a studio flat, just a room with a bed in the corner and a sofa plus a separate kitchen and bathroom. The first thing I saw was a pile of magazines around the bed open at pages of naked men. As I kicked them under the bed, the father diverted his daughters into the kitchen. I tidied up the magazines then I realised there were pictures of the owner naked on the wall. I hurried into the kitchen – there were naked men on the walls in there too. “It’s got loads of storage in here,” I heard one of the teenagers say as she opened a cupboard door to reveal two massive dildos as big as my forearm on the shelf.
In 1996 I went to London to seek my fortune and was working in Notting Hill when they made the film of the same name. Portobello Road had always been a tourist attraction but now all the stars wanted to live there. Michael Coulthard, Jason Donovan, Paula Yates, Robbie Williams, Richard Ashcroft, Jamie Rednapp, Paul Oakenfold –I knew where they all lived. They filmed the James Bond films in the Pinewood studios nearby and I sometimes spotted Robert Carlisle along with stunt men and designers. Jason Donovan had a flat nearby which he rented out to Salmon Rushdie when he was in trouble with the satanic verses.
I was showing business executives, songwriters and famous people around plush penthouses overlooking the Thames, watching party boats going past. One flat had a glass ceiling and a glass roof. You could sit in the living room and look up at the sky, clouds and stars through the fish. That one was about £3000 a week to rent (this was back in 1996). There was another place with remote speaker systems and the music would go on and off as you walked round the house – very new at the time.
The strangest place I went in belonged to a flamboyant transvestite. Everything in there was over the top. The walls of his small flat were covered in pink furs, leopard skins and glitzy sequined things. There were lions’ heads on the walls and lion furs spread on the chairs and floor. It was full of dirty pictures and crazy sketches of blokes and women and pink fluffy crazy new vogue art deco stuff. It was like being in grown up’s playpen full of toys.
I saw him several times and he always looked different. One day it would be red lipstick, another time a big purple wig, the next day a blonde wig or different coloured eye makeup. He wasn’t trying to pretend he was a woman, he just loved to shock people and draw attention to himself.
One of my wealthy friends wanted to me to help him get in 10 prostitutes for his friends to share on his birthday. Another time, a prostitute wanted to rent a flat close to the park, a good place for business. She didn’t have enough money and asked me to take it off the market, tell everyone it was sold and pretend to my boss that she was buying it until she could afford it. In return, she asked me to go to one of those dodgy sauna places that spring up from time to time where I would get a large cheque and undoubtedly something else to make me even happier. I didn’t go.
Back in Notting Hill, there was a guy wanted to let out his damp basement flat. He turned the central heating up high and changed the carpets but he could not disguise the fact that the tube ran right underneath the floor. Every few minutes the windows and floor would vibrate. I thought we would never let it out - then one day the Central line broke down. A man snapped up the flat and picked up the keys 2 weeks later. 10 minutes after he’d left the office, we got a phone call saying he didn’t realise the tube trains came smashing by underneath. There was nothing we could do, he had a year’s contract by then.
One of the worst things that happened to me was when I was back in Dorset. I had two buyers for the same semi detached house and they were both willing to pay way over the odds for it. So I knocked on the neighbour’s door and said, “I’ve got somebody who’ll buy your house if you want to sell it”. He agreed - but a few days later, he came into the office shouting that, “You’re robbing me, you haven’t done anything to earn this money. If you can’t get the people to exchange next week, I’m pulling out.” He was rude, aggressive and arrogant, ringing up his solicitor one day to say he was going to pull out and then ringing up to say he’d changed his mind. About five weeks down the line, he got in such a bad row with us he decided to put his property on the market with another agent as he wanted even more money. He wanted us to return the keys that day. I phoned up and left a message on his answer machine – “We’re too busy today but your keys will be here and you can pick them up anytime. We wish you well with your other agent and it’s been brilliant working with you” – a bit of sarcasm – and then slammed the phone down. The office was in an uproar. We spent the next five minutes rubbishing him. He’d upset a lot of people. Then I realised an awful thing - the phone was off the hook and the whole thing was on his answering machine!
There was only one thing to do. We had to get into that house and erase the message. I sent a colleague to the house and she managed to erase the offending message. I left another one saying, “It’s Eddie, my colleague is just bringing the keys out to you.” We had got away with it!
I opened the door and ushered in my client and his two teenage daughters. We were in a studio flat, just a room with a bed in the corner and a sofa plus a separate kitchen and bathroom. The first thing I saw was a pile of magazines around the bed open at pages of naked men. As I kicked them under the bed, the father diverted his daughters into the kitchen. I tidied up the magazines then I realised there were pictures of the owner naked on the wall. I hurried into the kitchen – there were naked men on the walls in there too. “It’s got loads of storage in here,” I heard one of the teenagers say as she opened a cupboard door to reveal two massive dildos as big as my forearm on the shelf.
In 1996 I went to London to seek my fortune and was working in Notting Hill when they made the film of the same name. Portobello Road had always been a tourist attraction but now all the stars wanted to live there. Michael Coulthard, Jason Donovan, Paula Yates, Robbie Williams, Richard Ashcroft, Jamie Rednapp, Paul Oakenfold –I knew where they all lived. They filmed the James Bond films in the Pinewood studios nearby and I sometimes spotted Robert Carlisle along with stunt men and designers. Jason Donovan had a flat nearby which he rented out to Salmon Rushdie when he was in trouble with the satanic verses.
I was showing business executives, songwriters and famous people around plush penthouses overlooking the Thames, watching party boats going past. One flat had a glass ceiling and a glass roof. You could sit in the living room and look up at the sky, clouds and stars through the fish. That one was about £3000 a week to rent (this was back in 1996). There was another place with remote speaker systems and the music would go on and off as you walked round the house – very new at the time.
The strangest place I went in belonged to a flamboyant transvestite. Everything in there was over the top. The walls of his small flat were covered in pink furs, leopard skins and glitzy sequined things. There were lions’ heads on the walls and lion furs spread on the chairs and floor. It was full of dirty pictures and crazy sketches of blokes and women and pink fluffy crazy new vogue art deco stuff. It was like being in grown up’s playpen full of toys.
I saw him several times and he always looked different. One day it would be red lipstick, another time a big purple wig, the next day a blonde wig or different coloured eye makeup. He wasn’t trying to pretend he was a woman, he just loved to shock people and draw attention to himself.
One of my wealthy friends wanted to me to help him get in 10 prostitutes for his friends to share on his birthday. Another time, a prostitute wanted to rent a flat close to the park, a good place for business. She didn’t have enough money and asked me to take it off the market, tell everyone it was sold and pretend to my boss that she was buying it until she could afford it. In return, she asked me to go to one of those dodgy sauna places that spring up from time to time where I would get a large cheque and undoubtedly something else to make me even happier. I didn’t go.
Back in Notting Hill, there was a guy wanted to let out his damp basement flat. He turned the central heating up high and changed the carpets but he could not disguise the fact that the tube ran right underneath the floor. Every few minutes the windows and floor would vibrate. I thought we would never let it out - then one day the Central line broke down. A man snapped up the flat and picked up the keys 2 weeks later. 10 minutes after he’d left the office, we got a phone call saying he didn’t realise the tube trains came smashing by underneath. There was nothing we could do, he had a year’s contract by then.
One of the worst things that happened to me was when I was back in Dorset. I had two buyers for the same semi detached house and they were both willing to pay way over the odds for it. So I knocked on the neighbour’s door and said, “I’ve got somebody who’ll buy your house if you want to sell it”. He agreed - but a few days later, he came into the office shouting that, “You’re robbing me, you haven’t done anything to earn this money. If you can’t get the people to exchange next week, I’m pulling out.” He was rude, aggressive and arrogant, ringing up his solicitor one day to say he was going to pull out and then ringing up to say he’d changed his mind. About five weeks down the line, he got in such a bad row with us he decided to put his property on the market with another agent as he wanted even more money. He wanted us to return the keys that day. I phoned up and left a message on his answer machine – “We’re too busy today but your keys will be here and you can pick them up anytime. We wish you well with your other agent and it’s been brilliant working with you” – a bit of sarcasm – and then slammed the phone down. The office was in an uproar. We spent the next five minutes rubbishing him. He’d upset a lot of people. Then I realised an awful thing - the phone was off the hook and the whole thing was on his answering machine!
There was only one thing to do. We had to get into that house and erase the message. I sent a colleague to the house and she managed to erase the offending message. I left another one saying, “It’s Eddie, my colleague is just bringing the keys out to you.” We had got away with it!