The Alexander where now this has become a new feature of Batlisted since lockdown began

and we ask our guests where in the world are you? I am in London I am sitting on my

houseboat on Cheney Walk in Chelsea on the Thames and the tide is coming in so if I start rocking a little bit

How wonderful you'll know that it's not because I'm drinking wine which I'm rocking a

rocking, a little bit.

how wonderful. You'll know that it's because the tide is coming in. How long have you lived in a border houseboat in Cheney?

For 20 years. Yeah. Gosh. Yeah, yeah. And it's big. It's a bit like being in a loft or kind of New York loft, but it goes up and down with the tides.

It goes up and down twice a day, 20 foot up and down,

and it's heaven.

It's at the most perfect place to spend lockdown in my view because I would rather die than be in the

countryside but it gives me all the joy of the big skies and the water and the birds and a little bit of nature just enough for me.

Magic. It is the most spectacular boat, some of the greatest publishing parties I've ever been to have been on that boat.

It's wonderful.

Do you get out, do you get to walk?

Yeah.

Do you walk along the Thames? Is it strangely empty?

No. Cheney walk didn't stop with the traffic. I mean even in the greatest moments of lockdown

there were still lorries and cars pounding down Cheney walk and pounding

joggers of course which are the greatest menace of London life at the moment

the panting joggers we not just London life I don. You can imagine though in London they were a little closer to them and they

they pant a great deal. But yeah I go out twice a day for morning walk before I start work and then for a longer one in the evening and the

evening is incredibly exciting because there's a new river path that goes past Lots Road power station where there

...