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Suggs sings for Arlington

MADNESS frontman Suggs is returning to the place that inspired one of his band’s biggest hits to perform a free gig.
Suggs – real name Graham McPherson – will be playing on the steps of Arlington House a week on Monday to mark the hostel’s centenary, where he will also release 100 white doves.
He backed plans for a major renovation of the borough’s biggest and oldest hostel, a square red-brick building with a courtyard that looms large in Camden’s skyline.
Suggs, who is currently working on a TV series called Diminishing London, said he backed plans to reduce the number of beds at the Camden Town site and turn the ground floor in to an exhibition hall, workshops, an art gallery, and a meeting room for the remaining tenants.
Suggs wrote the hit Bed And Breakfast Man about someone who lived in the hostel. He said: “I love this place. I think it’s brilliant what they’re doing at Arlington.”
The hostel owners have also applied for Town Hall permission to open an art gallery in the site of the now-closed Regent Bookshop in Parkway.
Currently the hostel has 399 rooms, although since early this year it has stopped taking new tenants, and 130 rooms are currently empty because of the plans.
A source at the hostel, who did not want to be named, said they fear the new plans represent a downgrading of the number of people the hostel can house. The source added Arlington House has long been blamed by neighbours for anti-social behaviour in the area, and some don’t want the borough’s largest hostel to remain as Camden Town becomes increasingly gentrified.
A council press officer confirmed “numbers will reduce significantly” at Arlington House, but added “a new 48-room Salvation Army hostel is opening in Judd Street in August 2006 that will cater for people preparing themselves for independent living”.



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