Hendon and RIP Peter Falk

Peter Falk has passed on. I am one of the millions of fans of Columbo, the crumpled cop. During my third year at UCL, I lived in a house in Hendon with flat mates Ron, Seb, Steve and Tracy. Saturday night was Columbo night. We used to watch it on the TV in Steve's room, surrounded by his wall montage of empty cigarette packets and posters of "Penis Landscape". (This was in the years before he became a millionaire Internet porn baron. Steve, I mean, not Peter Falk).

I remember Ron being the biggest fan. He would always chuckle evilly when Columbo paused at the door of the murderer's house to say he had "Just one more thing..."

That house in Hendon was weird. I remember that there was a two-inch gap between the skirting board and the bottom of the wall on the rear side. When my dad, a builder, came to move me out after a year of living there, he told me the foundations had shifted and the place should be condemned as it could fall down at any time. We spent a crazy year in that house. I have many memories. My room on the ground floor next to the kitchen. I covered one wall with black bin liners for a "gothic" look. I used to play Kate Bush, Abba and Hawkwind and read books about Aleister Crowely. (By coincidence, a couple of years later, I was working with his grand niece at the Museum of London). I was a devotee of the Granada Sherlock Holmes TV series and twice went to see the stage version with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke. I was into bead craft and made long stringy necklaces from glass beads from a shop in Covent Garden. I was wearing one of them on one of the nights I went to see the Holmes play and I remember watching in dismay as the thread snapped and all my beads went bouncing off and away under the street lamps and into the night.

The street we lived in connected to the North Circular and had a large Jewish community. One day, I noticed that there was an unusually large number of wig shops in the vicinity. My friend informed me that a lot of Jewish ladies wore wigs. I started looking out for them and almost immediately noticed the lady across the road. How I hadn't noticed before puzzled me, as her wig was made for someone with a head much bigger, so that the front of it met with her eyebrows. It would always be at least a little askew, depending on what, I don't know. Maybe depending on the wind or how much she had been rushing about.

But anyway, going back to Peter Falk, I never realised he was also an artist, and a good one at that. I have been looking through his charcoal sketches and they show he had real talent. Google and check them out for yourself. Until then, here is Columbo roasting Frank Sinatra: