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Comedian Tim Minchin talks us through his guide to London, from eating at La Barca to exploring Highgate Woods.<\/p>\n
Currently Sydney. We were in London<\/a> for the period we had babies. We moved to Crouch End<\/a> when my wife was six months pregnant because my career and the foetus took off at the same time. Then we had another kid and lived here for eight years and it was absolutely my favourite place. But we\u2019re both from Perth in Western Australia and we were aware we were going to get stuck in London and all our relationships were here and our kids were not going to want to leave. So I got a job in LA and we tore the plaster off and just left. That was horrible. We lived in LA for four years and now we\u2019ve been in Sydney for seven.<\/p>\n Tim Minchin with Gary Barlow on stage at the Sydney Opera House<\/p>\n ITV<\/p>\n Where do you stay in London?<\/p>\n That\u2019s a good question. Have you got a spare room? It costs you \u00a3400 a night to stay somewhere nice in central London. So, I don\u2019t know. I do stay at Soho House in White City and it is an amazing place. I love the era of architecture and I love the gym. I stay in Dean Street a lot. I love being near the Cambridge Theatre, where Matilda the Musical,<\/a> which I wrote the lyrics and music for, is staged. So Covent Garden Hotel, all those Firmdale <\/a>hotels. But I would love it if there were some nicer hotels in the north. I\u2019d love to be closer to my friends in Crouch End.<\/p>\n Where was your first flat in the city?<\/p>\n We lived in Nightingale Lane on the other side of Hornsey High Street. The baby was in the box room with wind coming up through the floorboards because it wasn\u2019t really sealed and I wrote in the attic. At some point we heard the owners wanted to sell and I went, \u201cI think we can buy it.\u201d And so we bought it. What an amazing feeling that was.<\/p>\n London\u2019s my favourite place in the world. It changed my life and it\u2019s where my babies were born<\/p>\n When I won the Perrier Prize at Edinburgh and moved to London, I did a few corporate gigs. It was very fast. I didn\u2019t do a normal comedy thing. I just went solo touring. I started doing art centres and they sold out and then I did theatres and they sold out. So I didn\u2019t have a job. Not a real job.<\/p>\n Where would you recommend for a first date?<\/p>\n Where would I go on a first date if I was me? If I was a 50-year-old reasonably well-known cabaret artist? If I\u2019m going out at the weekend, I try to go places where I won\u2019t get hassled, so I\u2019d go to Groucho or Soho House.<\/p>\n The Groucho Club in Soho (Yui Mok\/PA)<\/p>\n PA Archive<\/p>\n What\u2019s the best meal you\u2019ve had?<\/p>\n I\u2019ve eaten so much good food in London. Do you know what I like? It\u2019s La Barca on the South Bank. It\u2019s an Italian with white tablecloths and grumpy Italian waiters who look like they\u2019d rather you weren\u2019t there at all. And the food comes fast and is good and it\u2019s a five-minute walk from the Old Vic. That\u2019s why I like it.<\/p>\n Who is the most iconic Londoner?<\/p>\n I\u2019d say David Attenborough is maybe an iconic Londoner,<\/a> but that\u2019s just because I like David Attenborough. Matilda\u2019s my iconic Londoner. A silhouette of a little six-year-old standing above Seven Dials with her hand on her hip. It\u2019s still absolutely amazing seeing her there. It\u2019s hard to explain when you come from playing in cover bands and it\u2019s self-taught and doing youth theatre and stuff. It\u2019s just a long way from my wildest of dreams. I\u2019m so proud of it.<\/p>\n The RSC’s Matilda The Musical at the Cambridge Theatre, written by Tim Minchin<\/p>\n Manuel Harlan<\/p>\n Where do you go and what do you do to have fun?<\/p>\n When I am away from my family and I just want to see a friend, I go to a show, or go and see a play. I will always get to the Old Vic and see whatever is on there because I\u2019m involved with that theatre. I\u2019ll go see Matilda. When I\u2019m in London on my own I just see shows. I think I\u2019m going to see Abba Voyage next.<\/p>\n Who do you call when you want to have fun?<\/p>\n When I land I go straight to my friends\u2019 houses. I don\u2019t like giving people lots of notice because it implies you expect them to change their lives. So I don\u2019t say I\u2019m arriving in London, I\u2019ll go, \u201cI\u2019m at Heathrow, can I come round?\u201d And I often arrive at 5.30am and need someone to hang out with for a while. I\u2019ve never had loads of industry friends except my co-creatives. I won\u2019t name them because they\u2019re muggles but they\u2019re people who are theatre directors and in the industry. Mark Watson is the only comedian friend I always want to see. He\u2019s like a nutty professor.<\/p>\n What\u2019s your London secret?<\/p>\n London\u2019s my favourite place in the world. It changed my life and it\u2019s where my babies were born and I could wax lyrical on running through Alexandra Palace on the Capital Ring, along the disused railway to Highgate Woods. I\u2019ve written songs about it: Summer Romance is a whole song about summer coming to London and it talks about running to Highgate. <\/p>\n Highgate Woods in North London<\/p>\n Shutterstock<\/p>\n How far you can run without crossing a road? You can\u2019t do that in New York or Sydney. It\u2019s ancient forest as well. In summer it\u2019s just the most gorgeous thing. When we had our daughter, Violet, and we were finding it a bit tough early on, that farmers\u2019 market at Ally Pally<\/a> was great as well \u2014 on Sunday mornings we\u2019d go and chat to people and that was huge for us. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Comedian Tim Minchin talks us through his guide to London, from eating at La Barca to exploring Highgate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[87333,748,393,4884,257,100656,83204,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-308809","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-alexandra-palace","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-london","13":"tag-soho-house","14":"tag-tim-minchin","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114952648272978584","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Gary-Barlow-Tim-Minchin-Sydney-Opera-House-Stage.jpeg\")
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