Stars on the Tube: Who’s Famous at YOUR Station?
by Bridget Galton | Hamstead & Highgate | May 19, 2022
Cartoonist Simon Ellinas has created a book of 272 caricatures of celebrities associated with each Tube stop, detailing their connections to each area. Simon Ellinas first started doing caricatures of his teachers as a Hampstead Schoolboy.
And after training at Harrow Art School of Art, the former St. Anthony’s and UCS pupil enjoyed a career as a cartoonist and illustrator for magazines and newspapers – including drawing caricatures for the nationals.
Now he has published his “lockdown project” which puts a famous face to every underground stop. The Barnet resident researched each destination, but says while areas like Hampstead (Ricky Gervais) and Highgate (Karl Marx) had “lots of possibilities” other celebrity connections were “more tenuous”.
“Once you get out onto the fringes you’re scrabbling around to find someone. For the new station at Nine Elms I chose Joanna Lumley because she was said to shop there. But most of them have strong connections, they were born, live, work or in the case of Dylan Thomas in Camden, they drank there – he drank in a lot of places, but I chose Camden Town.”
BBC correspondent Katya Adler was assigned Swiss Cottage because she attended South Hampstead High School. Martin Freeman is Belsize Park because “I heard he lived there.” Actor Damian Lewis lives in Tufnell Park, and Ray Davies is Archway, because Muswell Hill doesn’t have a tube stop and The Kinks played the Archway Tavern. Meanwhile Rolling Stone Keith Richards graces St. John’s Wood because “he wrote I Can’t Get No Satisfaction there in the 60s”, and Helena Bonham Carter grew up around Golders Green.
Singer songwriter Gerry Rafferty is the face of Baker Street, Emma Thompson famously grew up in West Hampstead, and comic David Baddiel, now a Hampstead resident, grew up in Dollis Hill.
He hopes readers will be intrigued to discover the connections between well-known faces and London areas, and believes most people are flattered by a caricature.
Buy the book from Amazon UK here for £9.52
Buy the book from Amazon US here for $14.81 USD
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For more information about the Illustrator, visit London Underground Caricatures here
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