NEW PRIMROSE HILL SET
Not only do our bright young TV stars all date each other, they live around the same London area notorious for celebrity scandal. Meet the...
IT’S the chi-chi enclave of North London that became synonymous with a particularly hedonistic breed of drug-taking, bed-hopping celebrity.
More than two decades after Primrose Hill earned its notoriety, its original hellraisers – led by Jude Law and Sadie Frost – have long moved on to tamer pastures as middle-age conformity takes its hold.
But a new generation of hot young talents has moved into the neighbourhood, and with their personal and professional lives so closely intertwined, this leafy corner of NW3 has become the centre of the fashionable universe once more.
Last week, The Mail on Sunday revealed the romance between Sophie Cookson – the privately educated actress currently starring in the BBC drama The Trial Of Christine Keeler – and Stephen Campbell Moore, the ex of The Crown star Claire Foy.
Yet the couple’s relationship is just one component of an extensive ‘luvviego-round’ of partners, exes and co-stars all based in the chic postcode.
Among them is Ms Cookson’s close friend Lily James, who sprang to fame as Lady Rose in Downton Abbey.
Just a few weeks ago rumours were circulating through the showbiz world that her boyfriend of five years, Matt Smith, was now involved with Ms Foy, his co-star in The Crown.
Smith was also once in a relationship with model Daisy Lowe – whose mother Pearl Lowe was a pivotal figure in the original Primrose Hill set, having a fling with Jude Law while her partner, Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey, slept with Sadie Frost.
Then there’s the Scottish heartthrob star of Bodyguard, Richard Madden, who dated Jenna Coleman – who in turn is now living with Tom Hughes, who played Prince Albert to her Queen Victoria on TV.
But not everyone involved in this starry social circle is necessarily the best of friends with all the others. Ms Coleman, for example, is said not to be on speaking terms with Ophelia Lovibond, Hughes’s ex.
While the new, largely clean-living generation shun the wild parties of their predecessors, they still frequent the same pubs that were so popular in the Cool Britannia era including The Flask in Highgate, The Engineer in Primrose Hill, and The Spaniards Inn and The Bull And Last, both near Hampstead Heath.
But there is one crucial difference from the previous generation, which also included the likes of Kate Moss, Patsy Kensit and Ewan McGregor.
While the original Primrose Hill set owned sprawling properties – such as ‘Supernova Heights’, the £5.3million mansion Noel Gallagher sold to David Walliams in 2005 – the area’s superheated property market means that today’s generation live in smaller houses or even flats.
Here, The Mail on Sunday guides you through the intricate links between the young stars.