What seaside commune is beloved of celebrities? Why it’s Hove actually

( I once had a bijou bolthole there)

Dear Ange, welcome to Hove Actually. Here's hoping you enjoy the place as much as I did. 

A lot has been written about your acquisition of a first/second/third (delete as applicable) home in a grand garden square overlooking the sea in East Sussex, just over the boundary where edgy Brighton puts on her knickers and morphs into (only slightly) more genteel Hove. And of course I know you won't be able to reply because there's some silly court order gagging you. The law eh? 

I know all about this because in the '80s through to the early 2000s I had a weekend bolthole in Adelaide Crescent where you have bought an apartment (or in pathetic Daily Mail headline speak 'shelled out') for a reported £800,000. The place was brimming with DX types until recently: My old friend Ivor Davis (fotp) was along the corridor when over from LA and, in dangerous vicinity to your new flat, was that old bulldog Brian Hitchen when down from London. You might not have been the best of bedfellows.

Just five minutes' stroll away from the sea is Montpelier Road where Annie Nightingale lived (nights out with her had to be booked well apart on health grounds) and everywhere there are great pubs, fine restaurants and fun company. But Hove being Hove, I'm not sure that pic of you sucking on a vape while on a lilo on the pebbly beach improves either your image or that of the government, already looking rather washed up. And certainly not Hove's. Actually.

In fact, it's not easy to categorise Hove; it's generally smarter than Brighton though Kemptown in Brighton, east of the pier, is where Dear Larry, Sir Laurence Olivier, lived for decades, so it must be very grand. And yes, he really did get kippers back on the breakfast menu of the Brighton Belle. And Roedean for young ladies is along the coast on that side of town. So is Brighton College, the Sunday Times (Independent) School of the Decade. Fees now include VAT of course and are a bit steep at around £60k a kid. 

In the centre of town with its expensive Lanes, Chris Eubank made a strange and expensive habit of parking one of his daft collection of impractical cars (fire trucks one day, a Ferrari the next) on double yellow lines while he sat in a pair of spats having coffee and taking in the puzzlement of passers by. Meanwhile the traffic wardens licked their lips. You may be too young to remember him but think Rees-Mogg with a suntan and a lisp. 

Other Hove residents before, during and since my time include Cate Blanchett, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney during his brain-fade period when married to the one-legged Heather, singer Adele and a collection of tattoos by the name of Beckham. 

So love, if you are able to get away from the day job, and who knows what the future holds after Keir's little shuffle, enjoy the place. If the tide is far enough past the shingle you can walk on sand all the way to Palace Pier. The skeleton of West Pier is pretty good too especially if the thousands of starlings do their balletic murmurations at dusk. And so far there have been no landings by boat people in Hove to embarrass you.

And remember, all may not be lost; That spiv Farage and his rich chancers may fancy their future but four years is a long time in politics.  So does that ghastly little opportunist Robert Jenrick, the only MP whose constituency is an anagram of himself. To save you looking it up, it's Newark.

*****

I'm no monarchist but I rather like Camilla whose account of being groped on the train has given a cheery start to autumn. It came as no surprise though; over lunch recently with friends of two generations, I was shocked to hear how widespread groping on public transport has become, especially on the Tube but also on mainline trains and even on crowded buses. Blokes actually reach climax while touching, not penetrating, a female neighbour packed close. I'm not sure how that can be gratifying but I'm not a student of saddo psyche.

The most surprising bit of Camilla's account is that it was told to Boris Johnson but was not about him.

*****

Happy Birthday Van Morrison. The old grump was 80 on Sunday. His music runs like a happy thread through my life, just 10 months short of his. From the first time I heard him in 1965 with Them, his little group of scruffs, in the Maritime Hotel, Belfast, I've admired his ability to write some of the great classic jazz standards (Moondance); pop singalongs (Bright Side of the Street and Brown Eyed Girl), great Blues (Gloria) and mystical hymns of great poetry (In the Garden).

We have seen him in concert more than 20 times and just once, maybe twice, has he said anything between songs. I assumed that could not be the case when he was at Ronnie Scott's, a far too intimate venue to get away with walking on, doing your bit and walking off. I was wrong.  

But the love of his home town and the glorious countryside around it and the frequent references to its food (Paris buns, potted herrings, Fusco's ice cream) make his song-writing little travelogues and should be, maybe soon will be, on the school syllabus. 

After all, anyone who can write the line 'If my heart could do the thinking and my head begin to feel' clearly is no slouch.   

*****

AND FINALLY 

The Chief of Staff has had her very own Tony Fowler moment. Her hairdresser who works solo and is regarded as the very best, told her that she is pregnant and would have to take time off. "Oh how bloody selfish, what am I going to do!"

ALAN FRAME

3 September 2025