Madness frontman Suggs and his wife, the singer Bette Bright, have listed their four-bedroom townhouse in Tufnell Park for sale for £1.5 million.
Suggs, also known as Graham McPherson, and Bright (Anne McPherson) are long-term residents of the north London area, along with their two daughters, Scarlett and Viva.
Ska-pop band Madness formed in Camden in 1976 and rose to fame with their debut studio album, One Step Beyond. Now, almost 50 years later, the band is still together and touring with six out of seven of their original band members.
“I’ve lived and worked most of my life in London. I grew up here, met my wife, got married, saw my children born, and in the last 40-odd years I must have traversed most of the city’s highways and byways at one time or another,” wrote Suggs in his book, Suggs and the City. “London, in one form or another, has always been a character in the lyrics I’ve written.”
In his song, Our House, Suggs sings about his working-class upbringing in a cramped terraced home. But, with 2,500 sq ft of space, he is no longer short of space.
Suggs’ current “castle and our keep” is spread over three storeys, with two bathrooms, two reception rooms and a garden. It boasts many of its original features, including wooden floors, high ceilings, bay windows and fireplaces.
Kept in good condition, the house suggests that Suggs, like his mother in the song, remains “house-proud” and that “a mess is not allowed”.
Compared to other musicians’ homes to have recently hit the market — take Boy George’s £17 million Gothic mansion in Hampstead, for example — Suggs’ home interiors are relatively sedate. There’s a laundry basket, a good supply of teabags in the kitchen and a stack of crockery in the cupboard. Boy George’s house featured a sculpted silver torso on a chair with two erect penises for armrests; Suggs has a print of Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss in his living room.
The property still bears marks of its owner’s success: there is a picture of a saxophone in the living room, a tambourine in the study and a framed Time Out cover, blown up to poster size, featuring Suggs in a pair of sunglasses and the headline: “Camden Madness”.
Suggs’ former Camden mews house, where he lived until 1985, was listed in 2021 for £1.95 million after a comprehensive renovation, while the Victorian terrace in Willesden that featured in the music video for House of Fun sold for £565,000 in 2015.
But for Madness fans, this goes One Step Beyond.
