Hanif Kureishi's My London

The author answers back to cabbies and goes to Café Rouge in his pyjamas
Hannah Nathanson31 January 2014

Home is…

West London. I’ve lived there since 1976. It’s where my kids are and it’s quiet: the noisy people have all moved to Shoreditch, which is a mercy for me.

What would you do as Mayor?

Open all the private gardens to everyone.

First thing you do when you arrive back in town?

I write down my thoughts and ideas from my travels in my journal. I always think I’ll go back and see if there are any stories in them that I can use, but I very rarely do.

Most romantic thing someone’s done for you?

My girlfriend and I have just bought each other rings with cats on. She likes cats and I like the jewellers we bought them from on rue des Goncourt in Paris.

Best meal?

I like Indian food, so any of the vegetarian or fish dishes at The Red Fort on Dean Street. In India, Leopold Café in Mumbai does very good dal tadka.

Best place to let your hair down?

My friend Caroline Michel’s house, she has great parties: people get drunk and uninhibited quite quickly.

Last play you saw?

A Season in the Congo with Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is a wonderful actor. The Young Vic is also a very comfortable theatre and very mixed in terms of class, age and background.

Building you’d most like to live in?

I’d like to be able to see the river every day, so anything overlooking the Thames, although I do like the view I have now from my study, which is of people walking up and down Shepherds Bush Road.

Best piece of advice you’ve been given?

‘Never take advice’, which I thought of myself.

Best thing a cabbie has said to you?

‘How long did it take you to write The Kite Runner?’ To which I replied: ‘If I’d written The Kite Runner, I’d be in a limousine, not your f***ing cab.’

Favourite discovery?

Saturday afternoons on the King’s Road in the 1960s and 1970s: it was a trail of peacocks with people showing off their clothes. I joined in wearing my father’s Indian waistcoat, a tie-dye T-shirt and velvet trousers.

Best place for a first date?

An afternoon walk along the river from Hammersmith to Putney.

Earliest London memory?

From the age of ten, I used to come into town from Bromley to shop for books with my dad every Saturday. I remember watching him disappear up a ladder in some obscure secondhand bookshop.

Biggest extravagance?

Educating my children.

Ever had a run-in with a policeman?

Yes, the other day when my house was burgled. He came round and told me how I should make my house more secure and I told him he should be the one securing the bloody street. That shut him up.

Who do you call when you want to have fun?

My three sons. We go to gigs; I get very uninhibited and they stare stonily at this old man enjoying himself. We recently went to an Erdal Kizilcay gig in the club under Stamford Bridge. He played all the instruments on David Bowie’s The Buddha of Suburbia album.

Favourite shops?

The Paul Smith shop in Notting Hill is very good for socks and scarves. For books, I like Any Amount of Books on Charing Cross Road. The best coffee shop in the world is the Algerian Coffee Stores on Old Compton Street. I go to the Café Rouge on Shepherds Bush Road to teach. I like it because I can walk there in my pyjamas.

Last music track you downloaded?

The whole of Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass. It’s a very long and very beautiful piece.

Who’s your hero?

Nietzsche because he subverts everything. Everything you think is true when you read his work turns out to be the other way round.

At the moment you are…

Publicising the movie I wrote, Le Week-End, and my new novel, The Last Word.

What do you collect?

Books. I very rarely get rid of any so I’m going to be inundated one day and you’ll find me buried under an unread pile.

The Last Word is out now (Faber & Faber, £18.99). Hanif Kureishi will be at the Southbank Centre on 12 February (southbankcentre.co.uk)

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