As Justin Bieber moves to Highgate, we welcome him to the north London neighbourhood

Gird yourselves, north Londoners — the world’s most famous ex-monkey-owner has a new pad in your ’hood. Phoebe Luckhurst welcomes Justin to the area
Welcome to Bieber-town
Paul Dallimore

It’s grim up north London. Jeremy Corbyn’s reign of terror persists in corners of Islington; misanthropic yummy mummies do snide battles of words at the iron-cast school gates. Communities are riven by catchment-area politics, and cocktails are served not in jars but glasses. And now, tween hellraiser Justin Bieber has moved to Highgate. There — really — goes the neighbourhood.

It was reported this week that Bieber, 22, has rented a 15-bedroom, 24,000-sq-ft mansion near The Bishops Avenue, better known as Billionaire’s Row. He is in the capital for the London leg of his Purpose tour, in gigs that he executes with “haughty efficiency”, and polls the crowds about whether he should get cornrows, according to one reviewer. It is said he “fell in love” with the area, and is now expected to live here when he is not at his home in Los Angeles.

He has already introduced himself to the neighbours: last week, on a walk past Highgate School, he asked pupils if he could join their game of football. He took a penalty and posed for pictures, until teachers cautioned the assembled paparazzi that they couldn’t take any more photos because most of their charges were under 16. At that point, it appears Bieber lost interest. “He saw the boys playing football and asked if he could join in,” reports a friend of one of the pupils playing. “Then he started kicking penalties by himself. Apparently he’s not very good at football.” It is too late now to say sorry; he’ll be feeling unwelcome.

However, Bieber is stubborn: he once insisted that his private jet wait eight hours while he searched for his pet monkey. If he is renting a home, he will be spending time here, even if the residents of Highgate Village object to his £25 million rental.

This is what his north London life will look like.

Home sweet home

Bieber’s rental home is an exorbitant party pad. The mansion sits in 2.5 acres of land, where Bieber can practise his penalties, and has a tennis court, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a steam room, sauna and personal gymnasium.

The indoor pool is uplit by violet lights, giving the pool’s glassy surface a supernatural glow and estimable Snapchat cachet. There is a home cinema, a wine cellar and 13 bathrooms, including one wrought from 12 types of Italian marble, where a thick, free-standing bath sits resplendent in the middle of the room.

There is a five-car garage, and the driveway is reportedly long enough to accommodate 50 cars, in case Bieber balks at catching the 210 into town. The property has its own panic room.

The property was built by a British sugar tycoon in 1910 and has been passed around the elite and elusive since. It was sold to an anonymous buyer in 2015 for £25 million, a quarter of its original asking price. It will reportedly cost Bieber £108,000 a month to rent. Property website Mansion Global enthuses that two months’ rent is enough to buy an average UK house. Bieber is reportedly worth about £163 million.

Incidentally, with that many bedrooms it seems unlikely that he would notice any illegal lodgers.

Justin Bieber's new mansion in Highgate 
rightmove

Everybody needs good neighbours

The Highgate and Hampstead set is a gilded coterie. Bieber might struggle to access it — the pet monkey will count against him — but its residents are notable thrill-seekers who could yet appreciate his unique brand of terrorism. High-profile residents include Kate Moss, who lives in the area with her daughter Lila Grace, and is often spotted in The Flask on Highgate West Hill. Her old mucker Jude Law is also a patron of the pub, and has a house close by.

Pop star George Michael lives in a mid-Victorian building near the Heath, while One Direction singer and dishevelled reprobate Harry Styles reportedly owns a £3 million home near the Heath Extension. Actress Emma Thompson is a long-term Hampstead resident who campaigned vociferously against the proposed opening of a Tesco Express in nearby Belsize Park.

Harry Styles will be Justin Bieber's neighbour 
Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty

Going local

There’s more besides The Flask (a “reputed former haunt of Dick Turpin, with a ghostly past”). The Holly Bush in Hampstead has cosy nooks and board games: perhaps Bieber could take one of his women there for a chaste round of Scrabble. The Duke’s Head on Highgate High Street sells pints in fashionable growlers — someone should watch Biebs after his second — and the menu is directed by a revolving selection of chefs in pop-up residencies, so it should cater to the star’s fickle attention deficiency. After hours, the riotous Boogaloo on Archway Road has a jukebox and a younger crowd of smirking, glowering twentysomethings; Bieber will fit in.

Obviously, there is the Heath: the view from Parliament Hill might yet convince him to reinstate his Instagram account. Precedent argues that it is best he avoids Highgate Cemetery: when he visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam on a tour, he wrote a message in the visitors’ book — “I hope she would have been a Belieber”. It is clear that he struggles with tone; scrawling “I hope he would have bought my album” across Karl Marx’s monument will not endear him to the earnest neighbourhood.

For food, he can get sushi and skewers at Jin Kichi, a tiny restaurant on Heath Street, or simple, authentic fare at the Brew House in Kenwood House.

Splash News

Local lessons

Ask not what your neighbourhood can do for you but what you can do for your neighbourhood. This week, Hampstead residents were dismayed to discover that this year’s Christmas Festival, scheduled for late November, had been called off. “Previous organisers have confirmed that no one was available to take charge this year,” reports a local newspaper. “That means there will be no Christmas market stalls in Hampstead Village, no Christmas grotto and not a reindeer in sight.”

Certainly, this is sad — but it is also an opportunity. Bieber could literally save Christmas, by throwing his own festival at his new house. He could hold his own market, selling coveted merchandise from his Purpose tour; he could create a Bieber Grotto; he could probably source a reindeer, or at least dress the monkey as one. This is his chance.

Bieber for local councillor? Never say never.

Follow Phoebe Luckhurst on Twitter: @phoebeluckhurst

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