I was born in a place called Purley, in the far reaches of South London. It’s a reasonably affluent, leafy part of Croydon, where the actor Bill Nighy went to school and where members of the Kray family disappeared after their empire gave way.
There have been, and still are, a few famous faces around: Darren Brown was born in Purley; Sir Bernard Ingham lived there, as did Wilfried Zaha before he left my beloved Crystal Palace; Francis Rossi is still about as far as I’m aware — he lives in the impeccably grand Webb Estate, an architectural marvel. People wear Gazelles and go to the driving range, if you know what I mean. Which is fine.
