Discover Top Posts Tagged with #malcolm's house

What do you think Malcolm’s home is like beyond what we see in the third series? In which neighborhoods do you think he could possibly live?

(originally posted November 16 2013 and updated March 2015)

This is a long post. No, it is a VERY LONG POST. In its original form it was already long, but now -- in addition to the original text -- I’ve added more images inline plus some updated and additional text PLUS an actual real life floor-plan of a house I think is pretty similar to the one we see in 307/308.

I kind of went all out on this because since series 3 originally aired, my biggest TTOI question (besides about Malcolm’s magic appearing/disappearing wedding ring) is: where does Malcolm live and how close is it to Westminster???? It’s been months YEARS since the original discussion and I’m no closer to an answer.

About the neighborhoods, frankly I don’t know enough about London to even name possibilities, although I suspect it is more likely to be (or more likely to supposed to be) North London than otherwise, since that’s where people like Malcolm tend to live.

(And by people I mean Peter Capaldi Alastair Campbell who lives in a terraced house in NW3 -- i.e. Islington* i.e. North London -- although his is four stories and probably more than twice the size of Malcolm’s.)

*Not the Angel

And now to the longest ever answer for a one sentence question

What do you think Malcolm’s home is like beyond what we see in the third series?

[Same style of disclaimer as the post on his books: let’s acknowledge and then completely ignore the fact that this is a real house furnished by the real people that live in it, who seem to have a real child who likes to look through the window (you can see his face looking out in the top right image). Except for the kid who is part of the TTOI canon thanks to 308, the rest doesn't matter — as far as we’re concerned this is Malcolm’s house with Malcolm’s stuff, that only reflects him and his taste.]

For the first question, I’m not sure how much more of his house there is to see. Which is to say, I’m not completely sure how big his house really is. Certainly, in comparison to the other TTOI houses where we can see enough to judge the size, Malcolm’s fairly-modest terrace house is definitely the smallest.

(ETA March 2015: If you go by the floor-plan way below, the total size is about 1600 square feet which sounds about right to me.)

I don’t know, maybe some UK readers are saying, what the hell are you talking about, that place is HUGE for one guy, how is that modest? so I’ll further qualify my statement by citing Hugh’s giant kitchen (with Aga of course) in presumably Kent that we see in 102, Peter Mannion’s monstrosity of a newish-build with the pimped-out tub and the kitchen big enough to house a family of nine we see the inside of in the Opposition extra and the outside of in 401 (which I’m choosing to believe is the same place), and Nicola’s properly shabby detached or semi-detached somewhat claustrophobic (which could explain a lot) thoroughly-middle-class-in-the-UK-sense house with enormous tree in front of it that we see in the 405 deleted scenes.

We also see a bit of Terri’s house in 102, but aside from it not being enough to judge the overall size from just seeing the bedroom and landing I also know from the commentaries it was actually the upstairs of “Hugh’s kitchen” so it’s hard for me to take seriously as its own place.

Finally, we also see quite a bit of the flat where Emma and Phil and Affers live, but since it is a flat it doesn’t count, although it must be pretty big since there must be least two and possibly three other rooms that are bedrooms, but that’s enough about that.

Now, I know the actual question I’ve been asked here is about the parts of Malcolm’s house we don’t see, but I’m going to start at the beginning with the parts we do see. We visit Malcolm’s house in 307 and 308, but the best and most comprehensive views of the interior — of which we only ever see the downstairs — are almost all in 307, while the only exterior views are in 308. In 308, you can only see to the top of the lower story bay window of the house he goes into, but if you combine what’s shown with the exterior shots of the other identical houses on the terrace where the upper story is visible, you can get a pretty complete view of the whole front of the house (top two images).

So what can you see? His house is part of a normal terrace set back a bit from the pavement/sidewalk behind hedges he’s surprisingly protective of, but with no kind of front garden beyond the jaunty flowers in the window box and the rather sad little tree in a tub next to the door. He needs to get his brickwork touched up a bit. There are no windows set at or below street level (plus I can’t see anywhere inside where there could be stairs going down) so I would say he has no basement/cellar although there does seem to be a little hatch outside that can be opened — is that left over from the days of coal delivery, maybe?

(edited March 2015 to add: I'll actually pretty sure now there *must* be a coal hole or cellar of some sort, although how accessible or usable it is, I don't know.)

He has neighbors on both sides. The houses are all two regular stories with an attic or loft above that with a very pitched roof. There are two bay windows, one on each story. My architectural skills are not enough to pinpoint when they were built, but I’m guessing they’re about a hundred years old give or take a decade or two. For what it’s worth, when Malcolm is coming down the street toward the hack pack you can see there are a lot of large mature trees so that further suggests the houses have been there for some time.

When I started really looking at Malcolm’s house, I thought there was a skylight (as in one built into the overall roof) over the living room, but after spending a lot more time going frame-by-frame through the curry lunch, I realized you can see something outside above the wall with the birch forest wallpaper which means the window has to be there and not another story up.

I’ve gone back and forth over the little bit of footage (it's only about a second long and a sample frame is the second big image) and I’m sure it is not a skylight in the usual sense, it’s more like a clerestory over the living room with the rest of upper story built around it…or something. I have to admit I can’t quite see how works where he’d get that much sunlight coming in from that angle if the window is that low down because I’m not sure how it isn’t blocked by the next house on the terrace, but then I also have terrible spatial sense and who knows what the houses look like from the back.

[And why don’t we know? Because we don’t know where the hell they are!]

But regardless of how it works, it does tell us that the living space upstairs must be smaller than the living space downstairs. You can see that from the way the (solid) ceiling of the living room — which looks to be quite a bit lower than than ceiling in the kitchen and front room — only extends over about two-thirds of the width of the room which means the room above the living room can only be that wide.

Could it be that the living room and the room above it is an addition to the original house? Or is a significant modification of whatever was originally there? I have no idea and defer to anyone with a better sense of 20th century London architecture — but I always thought it was a little weird that his kitchen was in the middle of his house, and it occurs to me (from personal experience of a major house renovation) that if the builders wanted to take advantage of existing plumbing when the kitchen was remodeled and the addition was added or modified then, that would perhaps better explain the location of the kitchen on the floor-plan.

If the living room is an addition, it would also maybe explain the wall between the kitchen and the hall in the otherwise open plan because that’s either a load bearing wall or has the plumbing in it that goes upstairs and therefore couldn’t be taken out. Seriously though, I’m just talking off the top of my head and the only thing I’m certain about is there is a window directly over the living room that brings in light and there is no solid structure directly over it.

In terms of the overall size of the house, assuming that the curtains you can see behind the PR guy in 308 mark the back wall*, Malcolm’s house is not terribly long and since you can see from wall to wall in some of the shots (like the one with the clerestory) you can see it is also not very wide. It’s certainly plenty of room for one guy, but I think it’s just about the minimal amount of space you’d think someone with his money and position in life would have.

*ETA March 2015: And I'm fairly certain it is, especially as I think can actually see all the way through to the back -- I don't think it's just a reflection because it’s all behind his head-- in the close-up of the little boy in the window

(no, I didn't frame-by-frame-through that scene either why do you ask)

Even so, with London’s current insane house prices, and depending on the location, his place is probably worth over a million quid now, but when he bought it, it would have been fraction of that, assuming he bought it before about 2003 when the market first starting going mad.

Obviously, the interior of the house has been significantly modified from whatever it looked like when it was originally built, but I’d say a certain heaviness to the stairs in comparison to the clean lines that otherwise dominate suggest to me they might well be one of the few remaining original features, along with the fireplace in the front room (the best pictures for it are the one where Malcolm has his hands up and the pointy foot picture) and the bay windows.

As far as the layout goes, it looks like when you come through the front door you can either go right up the stairs, or you can continue down the little hallway to the living room, or you can immediately turn left and go into the tiny front room and through to the kitchen and through there to the living room.

Hallway

The hallway looks like it is mostly just used as a place to hang coats and outer wear and to have access to the door to the cupboard under the stairs where there is probably cleaning stuff or a boy wizard or Malcolm’s crying nook where he keeps his teddy bear and his sorrow. Or, you know, the boiler. The weirdest thing is the refrigerator is there and not in the kitchen. It’s definitely a fridge — I didn’t cap any specific images but if you have a sufficiently high resolution source there are shots of Marianne on the couch where you can see the fridge in the background and see that it’s one with the freezer drawer on the bottom. So I’m guessing that Malcolm decided he really wanted a big fridge and couldn’t fit it into the kitchen proper, but was willing to trade that convenience for size by putting it in the hall.

ETA March 2015: Not that I’ve thought about this too much (ahem), but I wonder if those funny hanging lights aren’t Nelson Bubble Lamps or something similar. That would certainly fit in with Malcolm’s other designer stuff.

Front Room

The front room can’t be all that big, since it’s defined by the wall separating it from the front door and the opening to the kitchen but has a surprising amount of stuff in it thanks to the bay window fulfilling its purpose and providing a lot more space than if the front wall were flat.

If you come in from the hallway, there’s the fireplace with a heavy surround and mantel on the opposite wall and a tiny wee table with what looks like a monitor for a Mac (that would make Stewart happy) next to it and then there’s a wicker chest being used as an end table with a lamp on it. There's a high backed leather sofa thing in the bay window itself, and then in front of that, there’s something that looks like a canvas laundry basket, but probably isn't, and then a table with either actual Arne Jacobsen Series 7 chairs or very nice facsimiles.

That could easily be a dining table, but my impression it is more of a work table because it's scattered with newspapers -- quelle surprise -- and then the infamous music stand with clarinet sheet music is next to it and I think — in fact, I’m sure — there’s also a small upright piano next to it, also with sheet music showing, up against the wall.

[I’ve been asking myself why would a guy who lives alone need a table with five chairs plus a sofa, but it occurs to be that if he has family or friends over — and I think we can assume he does — kids can be parked there with coloring books or homework or handheld video games or whatever while the grown-ups sit in the living room and drink heavily.]

Added March 2015: So again with the lighting, this time about those big bucket looking things that very much look like Ktribe lamps designed by Phillipe Starck (or very nice facsimiles).

Kitchen

All of one side of Malcolm’s kitchen is cabinets and storage and worktop and the other side has the ovens (yes, plural: there are two in the wall) and cooktop and one assumes the sink although it’s never precisely shown.

The side that is all storage and worktop is where he keeps the microwave and electric kettle, and blender, and the french press/cafetiere that he uses later on to make his coffee that is so thick and black it’ll be like drinking fucking plimsolls.

On neither side do the upper cabinets go all the way to the ceiling (I shake my head at that design decision), but the space on top does give him plenty of room to store his glass vase and ceramic jug collection, plus cake stand.

What’s conspicuous in its absence is any sign of pots and pans or plates or cutlery or, you know, food of any kind beyond what he’s serving. But then, he does have tons of storage space so maybe it’s all stowed away out of sight and he either never uses any of it anyway, or he’s really good about putting it all away when he’s done with it.

There is that deleted scene from 307 where it’s clear Malcolm’s only contribution to the food prep of the curry lunch was transferring the take-away into his own serving dishes, and as much as I would like to think that scene was deleted for a reason and that really, Malcolm does like to cook for other people, I have to admit the evidence we see doesn’t seem to support that idea.

What really stands out to me though in his kitchen (beyond that white glass thing on the counter: what the hell is that?!? Also, there is a very strange almost invisible lamp) is the full wine rack on the wall. I’m pretty firmly in the Malcolm doesn’t drink camp so the wine rack, along with the music stand, and the table in the front room, is a sign to me that Malcolm’s curry lunch is not an isolated event. He has all that wine around because people (I’m generously including newspaper hacks in that group) come over to his house often enough that he keeps a good stock of red and white around as a good host should, even if he only drinks water or coffee or orange juice or Red Bull.

Living Room

The living room is the biggest room downstairs and the only one that extends the entire width of the house. One corner in the back is never seen on screen, but from what we can see, Malcolm has nice open shelves all along one wall for his books, and cds, and dvds and then plenty of cabinets underneath for storage where he uses the tops for display space for his various objet d’art (which they totally are although Malcolm would rather die than ever apply that term to anything he owned).

ETA March 2015: Okay, this I'm completely sure about -- the whole shelving system is the Vitsoe 606 Universal Shelving System and just looking at the prices on their website, Malcolm has minimally £4000-£6000 invested in that wall. So, yeah, they better be nice!

I’m calling it the living room, but the furniture groupings are set up so it is also the dining room. It’s never the focus of a shot, but the surface he’s serving the dishes of curry from is either a genuine Saarinen Tulip table with matching chairs or another nice knock-off.

Just about every time we see people in this room they are eating or drinking and whether it’s Malcolm with guests or Malcolm alone, everyone is always sitting (or lying if it’s Malcolm watching tv) on the sofa or sitting on the leather chairs and eating and drinking off the coffee table. Malcolm is clearly not too bothered about formal dining — does that surprise anyone? — and would rather use his dining table as a place to serve food and coffee from than an actual eating location where you have to sit up straight and ask nicely for someone to pass the salt.

General comments

I remember how surprised we all were when 307 first aired and we were so unexpectedly allowed inside Malcolm’s house. Considering that until then we’d seen more of the opposition’s living spaces — Emma and Phil’s dingy-barely-one-step-up-from-a-student-flatshare and Peter Mannion’s enormous house — than any of the DoSac or Number 10 characters and it was amazing and almost shocking to get this wholly unexpected view into Malcolm’s private space and see that was light and modern and airy and obviously very well lived in.

Until that point, I think most of us assumed he lived in some horrible dank virtually empty flat five minutes from his office (because really he lived in the office as seen in 102 for all the good it did him), and would never have dreamed he had such a nice middle-class place to call home with books all over the place and so much natural light (although I do note that even with all the sunlight he still has almost every light on during the curry lunch, oh, Malcolm) and pillows with pink bobbles on them, not to mention the pink pillows with sparkly bits.

We find out for certain that Malcolm is in no way a minimalist. He likes classic modern design mostly dating from the 1950s and 1960s (i.e. designs that would have been new when he was a kid) that has very clean lines — his shelves and his designer furniture attest to that— but he also really values comfort since he’s gone for the biggest, softest, most comfortable sofa (that isn’t immediately identifiable by designer) and massive, and slightly mis-matched leather chairs for his conversation/tv watching area.

For someone who claims he never reads, he has loads of books on many different subjects, but from the prominence of the TV and the storage of the dvds right over them in the open, not to mention the Wii, you can tell he doesn’t have any issues about people knowing he watches TV or tries in any way to hide his entertainment choices. Geoffrey from the Guardian (and his hair) makes a big production out of studying the collection during the curry lunch,

but like the snuggly fleece of 308, I don’t believe Malcolm cares at all about what people think about his taste in what he wears or watches.

Malcolm likes stuff and while his place is very clean, it’s not exactly tidy. We know from his various offices in Number 10 that he’s never minded clutter at work what with all the precariously piled boxes in corners and drifts of paperwork, not to mention his stack of loose notebooks and papers clutched in his arms as he charges around Whitehall, but this is the first time that we can see it’s carried over to his home life as well.

All the clippings and pictures stuck haphazardly to the walls and cabinets in the kitchen, the stuff sort of strewn about the kitchen worktop, the music stand being out, all the random pieces of artwork on the cabinets in the living room, ven the way his books don’t seem organized in any particular way. (I noticed a couple of the stone heads are knocked over in 307, but in 308 they are standing up again

and you can see they are arranged by size and also, for what it's worth, the two leather chairs switch places between 307 and 308). He clearly likes a lot of visual texture and stimulation. (I think the TV always being on even if the sound is usually off plays into that too.)

In terms of living things, he doesn’t have any pets, but he has an orchid in the living room and cut flowers in a vase on the mantlepiece in the front room plus of course the flowers outside. Maybe he has a garden in back, but I bet most of it is a patio with maybe a few more flowers in pots.

(ETA March 2015: If you can see all the way through in the shot with the little boy, it does look like there are trees or another tall hedge back there, at least in line with the front window. But I still picture a patio where Malcolm sometimes sits with his coffee in the morning and without in any way attributing it to Julius's influence, secretly feeds the birds and likes it.)

Who knows if that is still a working fireplace in the front room — we know the chimneys are still there because you can see them in the same outside shot of the upper-story bay windows — but he also has one of those modern gas fireplace/heaters under the TV which probably gets more use. The strangest element for me is the focus wall under the window with the birch forest wallpaper. Frankly, I’m not sure how I feel about that.

(ETA March 2015: There's also *something* on the wall over the fireplace in the front room -- you can see whatever it is best in the pointy foot picture -- but I'm not sure exactly what it’s supposed to be. Is it stenciling, or pinned up drawings, or some kind of dried flower something? It's quite mysterious.)

One thing I do notice is all of the furniture and fixtures and fittings are new even if the designs are fifty plus years old. Unlike, for example, the beat to hell oriental carpet that graces his office in the early days, nothing in Malcolm’s house has seen all that much use. The design of the Series 7 chairs and Tulip table and chairs goes back decades (as does 606 Shelving and the Starck-like lamps, etc.), but I would bet anything Malcolm’s pieces are ones he bought from a high-end store when he finally had enough money to afford nice things and could get away with designer furniture because the tide of social mobility had washed him into the middle class whether he liked it or not.

Which of course he does like, he likes very much, because he likes nice things that are well made (which aren’t always the same as expensive things, but usually are) and unlike someone like Nicola who comes from the upper-middle class where it’s one of those bizarre class markers that shabbiness is far more acceptable than things that are too new, Malcolm shows enough of his working class roots that he could never wrap his mind around that concept and after waiting his whole life to buy brand new things that no one else had ever owned, was more than happy to pay good money -- VERY good money -- to show (even if it was only to himself) how far he’d come from where he’s started.

The final question about Malcolm’s downstairs is do we really think he put it all together himself? Do we really think Malcolm went into a store and bought the bobble pillows on purpose? Or do we think Malcolm’s house is the result of him collaborating with someone else? Either the non-canonical ex-Mrs Tucker or someone he hired to make his place look like a grown-up lived in it.

Maybe Malcolm does secretly devour Dwell (or the UK equivalent if Dwell isn’t also a UK thing) and has a moodboard on Pinterest (well, not in 2010 he wouldn’t have, but you know what I mean) and knew exactly what he wanted in his house down to the final piece of pottery, but I kind of doubt it.I can imagine him wanting nice things that will instantly be recognized as nice things and that don’t take up too much room, but not being too bothered about the details like throw pillows as long as the sofa was super comfy and he can see all of his books and dvds and other things he wants to have right to hand.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I’m sure his house is more an organic reflection of who he is than a designer’s reflection, because of the art on the walls. Or rather, the lack of art on the walls. The two pieces of framed art you can see in the living room are so random and don’t really fit in with the style of the rest of the room. They’re hung at the correct height, at least in relation to each other, but that’s about all you can say about them.[I bet the throw pillows came with the sofa and it wouldn’t occur to Malcolm to replace them with something else as long as they do their job of propping up his head when he’s eating Hula Hoops.]

The Upstairs

So now let’s finally get to the part of his house that can’t be seen. My guess is there are three main rooms upstairs plus the laundry area. One is Malcolm’s bedroom, one is the bathroom which I would guess also has a laundry area attached (I know a lot of UK homes have the washing machine in the kitchen which looks very odd to American eyes, but I don’t see any sign of one in Malcolm’s kitchen) and then another bedroom/spare room/office.

However the house was originally built, when you get to the top of the stairs now, there’s going to be a door to the room over the living room, and then I wonder if there’s not a hallway the same width as the one downstairs with doors to the bathroom and front room, although I would hope the upstairs would be partitioned in a way that would allow the front room to be the whole width of the house.

My guess is Malcolm uses the back room as his bedroom since it’s the farthest from street noise and the front room with the bay window is the spare room/home office. Which leave the bathroom in the middle directly over the kitchen.

If the upstairs follows the same general design principles of the downstairs, all the walls will be white with nothing in the way of crown molding or baseboards/skirting boards and he’ll have hardwood floors except in the bathroom.

There’s probably a runner in the hallway, but Malcolm doesn’t seem too concerned about floor coverings — he does have a rug through the kitchen and one under the coffee table, but most of his floor downstairs in just wood and I would expect it to be the same upstairs.His bathroom is going to be about efficiency.

If it’s like his kitchen, it will be glaring white with modern fixtures and I expect he’s a lot more interested in having a big shower than a clawfoot tub. If the washing machine is also there, I would expect him to keep most of his clothes in that area, especially if he uses the small back room as his bedroom where there isn’t a whole lot of extra room.We know between one thing and another Malcolm is in a fairly constant state of sleep deprivation and he’s going to have to have his bedroom set up to maximize his chances of falling asleep.

So a big bed he can sprawl out on, good mattress, nice sheets, duvet, etc. Except he’s going to totally sabotage that by having a TV in there too because there is no way he wouldn’t. and the same way he has lights on in every room all the time (turn them off, Malcolm!) I bet he has the TV on when he sleeps. I bet he also has all of his phone chargers and assorted paraphernalia in there as well, but probably not a whole lot else.

We know Malcolm has family. We don’t know how large his family is. It could just be his mother and one sibling (who I think most of us agree is a sister) and his niece, it could be dozens of people. The only ones mentioned in the series are his mother and the niece who in 2007 was still a small child. (Again, if you have a sufficiently high resolution of 307, there is a tiny photograph of a little girl on the bookshelf next to the tv. I’ve decided it’s his niece.)

I suspect he visits (or doesn’t visit) his mother in Glasgow more than she visits him, but assuming the rest of his immediate family is pretty small, I bet his sister and assorted family comes to stay with him on a fairly regular basis.That’s part of the reason I think he uses the upstairs front room as the spare room/guest room. More people can fit into it, especially if it is the full width of the house, and when people aren’t staying in it, he can use it as an office.

There is at least part of a computer downstairs, but I imagine Malcolm has a more complete set-up with printer and industrial strength shredder and more shelving with Who’s Who and Hansard all mixed up with his more innocuous files and books left over from when he was a journalist. [And again, based on real floor-plans of similar houses, I expect the room probably has a fireplace matching the one in the front room downstairs. If you're still reading at this point, you’ll see it in the floor-plan at the bottom.]

I expect there’s at least one sofa that converts into a bed and maybe even two. Plus, of course, another TV. Now, mind you, I have a hard time thinking of Malcolm as someone who works from home very often, and I think canon does support the idea that he at least seems to be in the office all the time, but there are plenty of occasions during the year when the PM is on holiday and Parliament has risen and the various ministries wouldn’t be doing much (which is to say not fucking things up) because the ministers are also on holiday and things would be much quieter than the few times (in the context of the number of years TTOI covers) that we visit DoSac and Number 10.

On those occasions, maybe it’s possible Malcolm really does sometimes not go to the office, or takes a morning off if it’s the middle of summer, and checks his email from home and drafts briefing notes and does whatever it is he does that’s not just shouting at people from his official line. Which of course, thanks to the miracle of wireless technology he can also do, but while still wearing his pyjamas.

The Attic/Loft

The final space inside his house would be the attic/loft with the very pitched roof. It will be over at least the front portion of the house and I’m guessing it is accessed using a ladder — which may be more like a very steep staircase — from either the upstairs hallway or the upstairs front room.

Maybe Malcolm has it set up as a playroom/bedroom for the kid(s) when they come to stay, but I can also see him using it for storage for things too sensitive to leave in his Number 10 office or in his home office downstairs. This is where he’d keep his rainy day files in the triple locked file cabinets. If we accept (based on nothing except that’s the way it had to be) that Malcolm started as a journalist in the early 80s, his files must go back quite a long time especially since I bet he never throws anything away just in case.

Maybe once someone has been dead for fifteen years, but even then, you never know…

That's the end of the original post, but within a day or so of putting it up, I did a second post based on a floor-plan I found for a real house:

As, you can see, the real world address is Japan Crescent, N4, which is a little over six miles from Downing Street. I have to admit, that does seems awfully far away in terms of commuting time, but then it is only a suggested location -- there’s no canon information one way or another beyond ‘London’ which isn’t terribly useful.

On the other hand though, Hugh's Notting Hill flat that caused him so much bother had to have been more than four miles from wherever DoSa/c was supposed to be located and Hugh certainly didn't think that was an unreasonable distance away, but of course he had a driver and as far as we know, Malcolm doesn't.

(Hence the car-jocking or possibly he carpooled with Jamie when Jamie was there? Jamie sure makes it sound like he drives to work when he threatens Terri in the Specials and Malcolm and Jamie are looking very companionable when they arrive at Julius's meeting together...but I think I’m straying from the point.)

In terms of this actual sample house, if you pretend the downstairs level of the house is all the same width (i.e. without that strip of garden along the side) all you need to do is switch around the kitchen and dining room downstairs and bedroom 2 and the bathroom upstairs and that’s pretty much exactly how I’m picturing the layout of Malcolm’s house.

The listing also shows the astronomical rise in house prices from £335,000 in 2001 to damn close to a million now (it seems to have sold for £950,000) and from what I’ve read about the red hot housing market, plenty of places are being sold for well above the asking price.

Now I know there are a lot of Edwardian(ish) terraces in London, so this particular house is really just an example, but it works for me in narrowing down the correct style of house in a believable area for Malcolm, even if I doubt I would ever need to be all that specific as to the very street and house number.

The distance from Downing Street — well, even as I was writing this, I remembered TTOI London is already kind of Bizarro world London in that Spinners and Losers has blazing sunshine at 5:30 in the morning in January and Ollie can go to his (ex)-girlfriend's flat to wrestle with Phil over a comically over-sized wedge of cheddar and be back to Richmond Terrace in time to witness the food fight with Julius only some 10-15 minutes later.

(Not to mention Malcolm getting from his office in Downing Street to the Goldfish Bowl at DoSa in about 30 seconds flat in 103 even though Hugh, Glenn, and Terri later had to take a car and still had enough time to have a conversation when they went from DoSa to Number 10.)

So it could be argued TTOI London already pretty clearly warps the time space continuum in ways only a Timelord could unravel (hmmm), and maybe there, N4 is only five minutes away from from Downing Street regardless of what any stupid maps in our boring dimension might say.

#malcolm's house

Trending Tags

Recently Viewed Tags

#malcolm's house