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| Real neighbours from hell? They're the stinking rich | Real neighbours from hell? They're the stinking rich |
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| In the late 90s, when reality TV took off in Britain, Carlton Television, alma mater of the current prime minister, enjoyed great success with a series called Neighbours From Hell. Without any pretence of trying to settle disputes, or of taking any interest in how such bitterness might be resolved, the programme-makers' offer was an entirely voyeuristic one: the spectacle of ordinary, often struggling people, squabbling and threatening one another over issues with devil dogs, noise, gangs, leylandii etc. At one point, there were enough volunteers for the BBC to cast its own, rival version, Neighbours at War, described simply as a "series which follows long-running real-life disputes between feuding neighbours". | In the late 90s, when reality TV took off in Britain, Carlton Television, alma mater of the current prime minister, enjoyed great success with a series called Neighbours From Hell. Without any pretence of trying to settle disputes, or of taking any interest in how such bitterness might be resolved, the programme-makers' offer was an entirely voyeuristic one: the spectacle of ordinary, often struggling people, squabbling and threatening one another over issues with devil dogs, noise, gangs, leylandii etc. At one point, there were enough volunteers for the BBC to cast its own, rival version, Neighbours at War, described simply as a "series which follows long-running real-life disputes between feuding neighbours". |
| If there was a fault with Neighbours From Hell/at War, it was the limited social range from which the combatants were drawn. To judge by these programmes, anyone could have been forgiven for thinking that neighbour disputes were, if not almost exclusively the province of the disadvantaged, strongly linked to poverty and poor education, limited social skills and a propensity to spit. Those whom you hardly ever seemed to meet, in cautionary tales about hideously inconsiderate behaviour, were billionaires and aristocrats, trust-fund beneficiaries and collectors of antique silver/vintage cars/fine wines/clothes/shoes/cigars/servants. Did such people not argue then? Or should the researchers have tried a little harder to involve the owners of walk-in humidors? | If there was a fault with Neighbours From Hell/at War, it was the limited social range from which the combatants were drawn. To judge by these programmes, anyone could have been forgiven for thinking that neighbour disputes were, if not almost exclusively the province of the disadvantaged, strongly linked to poverty and poor education, limited social skills and a propensity to spit. Those whom you hardly ever seemed to meet, in cautionary tales about hideously inconsiderate behaviour, were billionaires and aristocrats, trust-fund beneficiaries and collectors of antique silver/vintage cars/fine wines/clothes/shoes/cigars/servants. Did such people not argue then? Or should the researchers have tried a little harder to involve the owners of walk-in humidors? |
| Either way, on the occasion of his planning triumph over scores of despairing neighbours in South Kensington, the heir to the Daimler-Benz fortune, Gert-Rudolph "Muck" Flick, is also to be congratulated on demonstrating – as the clips in Neighbours From Hell never did – that, compared with having a blameless, silver-haired heir to an industrial fortune next door, the presence of a brothel-keeper or breeder of illegal fighting dogs may be positively benign. | Either way, on the occasion of his planning triumph over scores of despairing neighbours in South Kensington, the heir to the Daimler-Benz fortune, Gert-Rudolph "Muck" Flick, is also to be congratulated on demonstrating – as the clips in Neighbours From Hell never did – that, compared with having a blameless, silver-haired heir to an industrial fortune next door, the presence of a brothel-keeper or breeder of illegal fighting dogs may be positively benign. |
| In theory, after all, a responsible council can caution, restrain or evict a sociopathic tenant and restore peace. If, say, Julian Lloyd Webber of South Kensington had confronted, not Gert-Rudolph Flick, but a pile of discarded mattresses, someone would have helped him. But where the principal offences are against taste and good manners, justice looks more elusive. In the case of Gert-Rudolph Flick and his third wife, Corinne Flick, Kensington & Chelsea has ruled that the digging out of their planned, two-storey basement, forecast to cause two years of disruption in the Onslow Square area, along with the pointless destruction of the house's 1884 Red Room gallery, should have its blessing, since it would only end in "visually discreet additions" to his existing £30m house. | In theory, after all, a responsible council can caution, restrain or evict a sociopathic tenant and restore peace. If, say, Julian Lloyd Webber of South Kensington had confronted, not Gert-Rudolph Flick, but a pile of discarded mattresses, someone would have helped him. But where the principal offences are against taste and good manners, justice looks more elusive. In the case of Gert-Rudolph Flick and his third wife, Corinne Flick, Kensington & Chelsea has ruled that the digging out of their planned, two-storey basement, forecast to cause two years of disruption in the Onslow Square area, along with the pointless destruction of the house's 1884 Red Room gallery, should have its blessing, since it would only end in "visually discreet additions" to his existing £30m house. |
| After which, if their houses have not collapsed, neighbours will have the further pleasure of getting to know the aspiring troglodyte, Gert-Rudolph, who must have many interesting stories to tell about his grandfather, the Nazi Friedrich Flick, without whose wealth there would be no underground swimming pool and who was found guilty at the Nuremberg war trials of using slave labour in his factories. | After which, if their houses have not collapsed, neighbours will have the further pleasure of getting to know the aspiring troglodyte, Gert-Rudolph, who must have many interesting stories to tell about his grandfather, the Nazi Friedrich Flick, without whose wealth there would be no underground swimming pool and who was found guilty at the Nuremberg war trials of using slave labour in his factories. |
| It would be entirely unfair on the Flicks, of course, to focus only on their contribution to neighbourhood discontent, when the same pattern is being repeated all over affluent London. While, for example, the local council was admiring Flick's basement treatment, which features, in a bold architectural advance on the two-basin bathroom, winter and summer clothes rooms (God knows what happens mid-season), nearby home-owner David Graham was upsetting neighbours including Edna O'Brien and the Duchess of St Albans. | It would be entirely unfair on the Flicks, of course, to focus only on their contribution to neighbourhood discontent, when the same pattern is being repeated all over affluent London. While, for example, the local council was admiring Flick's basement treatment, which features, in a bold architectural advance on the two-basin bathroom, winter and summer clothes rooms (God knows what happens mid-season), nearby home-owner David Graham was upsetting neighbours including Edna O'Brien and the Duchess of St Albans. |
| Best known here for preceding Conrad Black, as Barbara Amiel's third husband, Mr Graham wanted to extract more than 1,000 truckloads of earth to create a cellar twice as big as his visible home, featuring a three-car garage along with the usual wine cellar, pool, hot tub, ballroom, gym, spa, servants' bedrooms etc. This underground Xanadu, summarised his application, was the accommodation "required for contemporary living". | Best known here for preceding Conrad Black, as Barbara Amiel's third husband, Mr Graham wanted to extract more than 1,000 truckloads of earth to create a cellar twice as big as his visible home, featuring a three-car garage along with the usual wine cellar, pool, hot tub, ballroom, gym, spa, servants' bedrooms etc. This underground Xanadu, summarised his application, was the accommodation "required for contemporary living". |
| Although the FT's How to Spend It already offers a weekly insight into the continual struggle of the super-rich to maintain lifestyles commensurate with their earnings, the current planning rows reveal, like a log rolled back from a nest of woodlice, their agonies when London's finest historic properties frustrate their schemes. Consider the options of Mr and Mrs Muck, when they clocked that Victorian cowboys, as well as throwing up large buildings with zero clothes rooms and bidets, had left a great big gallery right over where any half-decent builder would want to put a swimming pool and steam room. Mr Graham, having at 75 reached that age when a former cable TV executive needs the assurance of a bespoke spa, was only reduced to planning a 50-foot hole in Kensington when, says his application, he was unable to find anywhere else in London that would "suit his family's needs". Where "need", you gather, is defined as always being within 20 feet of a man in red trousers. | Although the FT's How to Spend It already offers a weekly insight into the continual struggle of the super-rich to maintain lifestyles commensurate with their earnings, the current planning rows reveal, like a log rolled back from a nest of woodlice, their agonies when London's finest historic properties frustrate their schemes. Consider the options of Mr and Mrs Muck, when they clocked that Victorian cowboys, as well as throwing up large buildings with zero clothes rooms and bidets, had left a great big gallery right over where any half-decent builder would want to put a swimming pool and steam room. Mr Graham, having at 75 reached that age when a former cable TV executive needs the assurance of a bespoke spa, was only reduced to planning a 50-foot hole in Kensington when, says his application, he was unable to find anywhere else in London that would "suit his family's needs". Where "need", you gather, is defined as always being within 20 feet of a man in red trousers. |
| Even in relatively remote Hampstead Garden Suburb, an intact lawn can only, prior to its excavation, be a reminder of what might have been. Anyway it is here, the Hampstead and Highgate Express reports, that the plans of a city derivatives trader for a subterranean pool, wine cellar, etc – nothing fancy – are currently distressing close neighbours including Lord Justice Leveson, Richard Madeley and Sir Victor Blank, the banker whose catastrophic management of Lloyds resulted in a £21bn taxpayer bailout. | |
| Victor Blank's territorial needs v the derivative trader's sense of pool entitlement? Mary Portas's Georgian makeover v Primrose Hill conservationists? Ricky Gervais's underground golf simulator v the Hampstead water table? Kirstie Allsopp's peace and quiet v her neighbours' "incredibly annoying" basement conversions? | Victor Blank's territorial needs v the derivative trader's sense of pool entitlement? Mary Portas's Georgian makeover v Primrose Hill conservationists? Ricky Gervais's underground golf simulator v the Hampstead water table? Kirstie Allsopp's peace and quiet v her neighbours' "incredibly annoying" basement conversions? |
| Taking sides in Carlton's Neighbours From Hell was never this challenging. If it's unbecoming that the more glamorous neighbour stand-offs should trigger, at least for those of us who will always be safe from the whiff of Muck Flick's underground lavs, only wave upon wave of blissful schadenfreude, it is perhaps some excuse that the victims will be looked after. | Taking sides in Carlton's Neighbours From Hell was never this challenging. If it's unbecoming that the more glamorous neighbour stand-offs should trigger, at least for those of us who will always be safe from the whiff of Muck Flick's underground lavs, only wave upon wave of blissful schadenfreude, it is perhaps some excuse that the victims will be looked after. |
| In fact, where there is a precedent for basement digging, neighbouring houses will emerge, thanks to London's spiralling, unbelievably low-taxed property market, as even more attractive than before to foreign investors, while more and more ordinary buyers are excluded, for good, from any hope of ownership. | In fact, where there is a precedent for basement digging, neighbouring houses will emerge, thanks to London's spiralling, unbelievably low-taxed property market, as even more attractive than before to foreign investors, while more and more ordinary buyers are excluded, for good, from any hope of ownership. |
| The conflicting demands of greed and tranquillity – and the fact that you can never rule out the need for underground his'n'hers massage rooms divided by a champagne wall – these presumably explain why more Londoners did not get behind a private members' bill by the Tory hereditary, Lord Selsdon, the subterranean development bill. Designed to protect the neighbours of ambitious excavators, both of which groups include interested hereditary peers, it would have provided the first deterrent to date to billionaires who believe that the Georgian gem that cannot be reduced to a lid over a Playboy mansion has yet to be built. The astonishing decision by Kensington & Chelsea council says they might be right. | The conflicting demands of greed and tranquillity – and the fact that you can never rule out the need for underground his'n'hers massage rooms divided by a champagne wall – these presumably explain why more Londoners did not get behind a private members' bill by the Tory hereditary, Lord Selsdon, the subterranean development bill. Designed to protect the neighbours of ambitious excavators, both of which groups include interested hereditary peers, it would have provided the first deterrent to date to billionaires who believe that the Georgian gem that cannot be reduced to a lid over a Playboy mansion has yet to be built. The astonishing decision by Kensington & Chelsea council says they might be right. |