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Amy Newman, Brighton, Brighton Life, Pearson Keehan

Amy Newman of Pearson Keehan, estate agents

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Corinne Sweet, The Whistler’s  Interesting Person correspondent, talks to Amy Newman, Queen of Pearson Keehan the new estate agent on the block

If your idea of an estate agent is something out of Stath Lets Flats or Dubai: Buying the Dream. Then think again. There’s a new gal on the block and she’s breaking the mould. 

Amy Newman is a rare breed: a woman Director of a relatively new estate agent, Pearson Keehan, in Seven Dials. Born and bred in Hove, Amy spent her formative years in the midst of a football-loving household. Her father, Paul, set up and coaches the West Hove Dynamos, a grassroots football club. Her mother, Jayne, does the admin. Amy helps with the social media and advertising. And her brothers, Lee, Ross and Adam, played football and now coach the Dynamos themselves.

“My footballing family gave me a great background training for working as an estate agent”, grins Amy. “I was a bit of a tomboy and being the youngest of four I had to learn to stand my own ground.” Loving the outdoors, she played football, like her three bros, but also did netball and ballet. Amy went to schools in Hove and Brighton (St Andrew’s Primary and Blatchington Mill), and being sports and animal-mad decided she’d train as an animal care assistant.

Leaving school at 16 she went to Plumpton College to learn her trade helping abused, abandoned and sick animals. “I grew up with dogs and cats and really wanted to work with them”, she says. She ended up with a rescue dog, Poppy, who had a heart-wrenching history, plus a mature cat, Edward.

While finishing her Diploma at Plumpton, Amy worked in Pet’s Corner, in Hove, rising to Manager. On graduation she was offered work by a friend in the, now defunct, Brighton Accommodation Agency . It was here Amy began to cut her teeth on the house-purchasing business. 

She realised that helping people find a home, buy or sell their properties, was an important skill to have. “In many ways you meet people when they are having a difficult time: divorcing, moving cities or jobs, or after a death”, explains Amy, “You almost are a therapist and you have to understand how to help people”.

Amy’s experience growing up in a robust, but supportive home, and her work with animals, meant she has stacks of common sense mixed with compassion. Like her mother, she is a great organiser and is good at strategic thinking. 

Meanwhile, Amy worked for well-known local agencies for 13 years, saved hard and lived at home. She eventually bought her own home near Mile Oak Farm where she lives with partner, Billy, who is an up-and-coming DJ.

However, working in estate agencies has not all been plain sailing. Amy has found the glass ceiling has sometimes been reinforced with heavy-duty concrete by particular types of male colleagues. “It’s sometimes felt like being in a frustrating boys’ club”, she says wryly, “But my experience working with animals had shaped my compassionate approach to people.” 

Amy decided to rise above any challenging situations thrown at her at work. “I’ve learned to manage complex and sensitive situations with empathy and understanding”. And certainly, it’s helped Amy succeed in a male-dominated industry.

Now working with Chris Pearson and Kevin Keehan, who happen to be old friends from childhood, their attitudes to work inspired Amy to join them in their new enterprise. Together they set up Pearson Keehan together after the trials of lockdown. 

Amy joined on a self-employed basis in October 2024. Tragedy struck in January 2025 and Amy ruptured her Achilles heel playing netball. While injured, Amy used the time to develop new branding, a website and designed the new office at Seven Dials. Ironically, it was the same building she worked in (Mishon Mackay) at the beginning of her career – but it was now getting an Amy makeover. She had gone full circle. Having worked closely with Chris and Kevin for the launch of Pearson Keehan, Amy became a Director when the Seven Dials branch opened in August 2025.

“I have always been really focused on selling and buying houses, which I think is important.” Amy says it’s important for sellers to have a clear strategy and approach to selling in the current uncertain market, which is why it’s important to work with the right agent. She believes it’s important to do your homework and stay positive. Meanwhile, in the office, Amy says she likes to lead from “under the radar” as she has no need to stoke her ego. 

Amy is chic, calm and straight-talking. Exuding quiet confidence she believes women are generally more empathic and treat customers well. Plus, she has words of wisdom for any woman wanting to rise to the top in the estate agency business: “Back yourself, know you’ll succeed, but do it your way”. 

Fatboy Slim, It Ain’t Over...  ‘Til The Fat Boy Sings, Norman Cook

It Ain’t Over…  ‘Til The Fat Boy Sings

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You know how sometimes you look at someone and think “You look kinda familiar” but you can’t place the face and move on, think nothing more of it. But sometimes you think “You, I know”. Well… 

I was in the Helm Gallery to meet The Whistler’s food editor who was there to discuss a show she was recording and I was having a look around and… “You look kinda familiar. What’s going on here?”  

“What’s going on is I’m taking over the Helm Gallery for six weeks” Norman Cook tells me. “It’s half art exhibition and it’s half art sale. There’s lots of prints by artists that are associated with me or who I’ve collaborated with, and it’s all based around the book “It Ain’t Over…  ‘Til The Fat Boy Sings”.

“I realised at the beginning of this year that I am entering my 40th year since I quit my day job at Rounder Records and ran off to join the circus, and I was thinking about how to mark or celebrate that anniversary.  

“I’ve always shied away from doing an autobiography. I’ve been asked a few times and I just, I can’t remember the really good bits. And the bits I can remember I can’t tell while my children and my parents are still alive, so when this idea of a visual documentary came about it seemed a good idea. It’s a coffee table book, so mainly pictures. There’s no warts and all stories, nothing about celebrity drug taking, I’m afraid…”

Could we do an after hours version? 

“Yeah, talk to me about that later”. 

Are you one of these characters who’ve always squirreled stuff away? “Yes, I’ve got every single backstage pass I’ve ever have. The first year, I tried to keep tickets every gig I played, that was just untenable, but I’ve kept the backstage passes from every single one, and I’ve kept photos of all sorts, the boxer shorts that inspired the album title “You Come A Long Way, Baby”. I’ve also got the dubious honor of having a dildo named after me and we’ve got a photo of that in the book…

Moving swiftly past the inevitable line about it being a pop-up book… When you were a kid and you went to gigs when you’re 13 or whatever, have you still still got the stubs? 

“Yeah, the stubs are in the book, there’s the fanzine I used to write for…”

It’s a fantastic memorabilia collection, and while it’s obviously Norman’s book, a little bit This is Your Life, it’s also a lovely ride through the pop cultural landscape of the last 40 years.   

40 years. That’s a long time. Are you going to continue doing it?

“Doing what?”

You know the thing you do, where you stand there and play records. 

“Oh, that thing. Yeah, that’s what I do. I’ve done that thing twice this week already. I’ve got this weekend up the next weekend. I mean, Amsterdam, Stockholm and somewhere else, and then do some British dates in December. This year, I’ll do 109 shows, which is my personal all time record for shows in a year”.

That’s extraordinary. 109 shows. That’s… almost every other day. It’s not far off. 

“It’s two a week or one every three days. I mean, it has been quite relentless, but I love my job. It never feels like work. I just love it”.

l Helm Gallery 15 North Rd, Brighton and Hove, BN1 1YA    https://helm-gallery.com/

l It Ain’t Over… ’Til the Fatboy Sings (Rocket 88 Books) 

Brighton, Brighton Life, Chilli Pickle

The Chilli Pickle in Brighton by Gilly Smith

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The Chilli Pickle’s Alun and Dawn Sperring are two of Brighton’s most intrepid restaurateurs and have been travelling through South Asia on a quest for adventure and the best food they can find. They tell Gilly Smith what treasures they brought home. 

With kids, Fletcher, now 12, and Stanley, 18 in tow, Alun and Dawn Sperring have spent most of their lives exploring India, from the crazy bazaars of Old Delhi to the hill stations in the western ghats to the tropics in the south and the deserts of Rajasthan. 

Much of what they’ve found over the years has made its way onto the menu of their restaurant, the award winning, OctoberBest favourite, Chilli Pickle, now back in its original home in the Lanes. The Laal Maas, a fiery mutton curry comes from an early trip to Jaipur, its deep red chilli colour and a robust taste of whole garam masala served with hot red pickled onions and naan. The lassi, a traditional yoghurt drink seasoned with cardamom and signature tasty milk skin on top, they found served in a clay pot which, once finished, is smashed. 

Now they’re back from their latest trips through Kerala, Varanasi, Chennai in India and Lahore in Pakistan with new flavours and stories to tell. 

“When we visited Lahore this time, it was all about the nose to tail eating and meat cooked over fire on the streets”, Alun tells me. “We’d go for an early breakfast meal of paya which is goat’s trotter soup, which they’ve cooked overnight for the locals who start work at around 5am. It’s a wonderful way to start the day, a big dose of collagen and protein in one go. They finish the vat and then they start cooking all over again through the night.”  

Paya, Chilli Pickle-style isn’t quite the whole trotter, but its broth, cooked down into a sticky consommé, is going down a storm in Brighton. Alun and Dawn pride themselves on offering the real South Asian taste that they’ve found on their countless adventures. Their spicing is honest and unapologetic, and they’re happy to replicate some of the more challenging dishes; even the brain curry has been on the menu. But will the Katakat make it to the specials? “Ooh that was good”, he sighs. “It’s street food that’s a bit like the Japanese Tepanyaki but made with goat testicles chopped up with mixed spice, green chilli and butter.”

I asked him how he can recreate the rich eating experiences of India and Pakistan, the throngs of local workers in the vegetarian canteens, or messes, of industrial Madras, or the unruly crowds at Kebab Corner in Chennai, and the calm of the house boats of Kerala where flat fish is a must. Answer: they don’t. The taste is enough to transport anyone who dreams of India. “We loved the kebabs in Chennai,” says Alun. “We now do the Malai chicken kebab which is topped with a spicy rich cream drizzled with butter and spiked with cardamom and kewra. It’s another level. We accompany all our kebabs with razor thin onion salad with a loose spicy green chutney, so we’re accompanying all our kebabs on the menu that way now.”

The indigenous Keralan pomfret is simply replaced with local plaice in our Kettuvallam Whole Plaice Fry”, he tells me. “It’s just rubbed with a really spicy marinade, ginger, chilli powder, awain seeds, rice flour, fresh lime curry leaf and fried dry and served with a lovely punchy ginger chutney and tempered coconut rice. And it makes a lovely side lunch or dinner special.”

Look out for the Nihari keema kulcha from Lahore with marrow bone gravy, a flatbread stuffed with beef Koobidah and served with a deliciously unctuous sticky spiced marrow bone gravy mopped up with stuffed flat bread.

l The Chilli Pickle – 6-8 Meeting House Lane, BN1 1HB

01273 442893

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Microdosing

The Secret Diary of A Microdoser #8

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I ripped open my shirt and bared my chest. My body immersed fully in dance. No holds barred. Loose. Wild. Free. Without any care as to what I looked like to the rest of the crowd who stopped and stared at this bearded old freak. Somehow, I knew in my heart that my father was dying at that very moment. His masculine energy rode the sound waves of a psychedelic guitar riff and penetrated my body. This was his parting gift to me, filling my mind and lifting my soul, as he journeyed through the ether on his final adventure. 

Psychedelics have been used throughout history to honour, remember and indeed communicate directly with our ancestors. Here I found myself vaping DMT in the moment of my father’s passing. Interacting with his spirit, perhaps by chance, perhaps by destiny, as he travelled through a psychedelic maelstrom, gifting me the energy that he no longer needed. One last selfless act, so characteristic of the man, or maybe his worldly energy was simply superfluous to his needs as a new type of wind now filled his sails. 

It was the last night of Shambala music festival 2024 and I was watching the mighty Ozric Tentacles, a band that I hadn’t seen since the Manchester Megadog in 1998. But I never could have predicted, never could have imagined that this would have been my experience of my father’s death. That I would meet my father’s spirit in a realm that I happened to be visiting at the same moment in time, unlocked by the DMT key. 

As I walked away from the gig, I received the call that confirmed what I already knew. I went with the flow of friends but hung back from the crowd. Let it land. I processed the power of the experience that he had been through and I had witnessed and acknowledged the gratitude, love and peace that formed my memory of him. 

A short while later, we arrived at our destination, an art installation called The Dancing Fountain, where it took me a few minutes to fathom that this rhythmic flow of water was the personification of my father’s spirit after he had survived inter-dimensional travel. The realisation dawned on me that he was using this medium to announce his arrival in a state of pure freedom. 

With the DMT pen never far from my lips, I stood amazed, stunned with wonder. I witnessed his joy in the explosion of droplets, pulsing and springing from the Fountain as he span, jumped and danced one last time. 

But how was all this possible? The answer is quite logical. Our consciousness is the fruit of the universe in the same way as a mushroom is the fruiting body of a mycelium. Our modern western culture tends to view the universe as brutal and unthinking, a product of chaos and the random interaction of forces, elements and energy. As religious structures lose credence, undermined as much by their own institutional fallibility as by our increasing intelligence and captured knowledge base, we’ve fallen into a habit of viewing our species as separate from the universe, an accident of evolution. Freud has a lot to answer for in that respect. But it is not the case. Life is the flower. Education is the pollination. Conscious thought is the fruit. If we follow the same pattern we see in nature and delve deeper, we see that the neurological pathways of the brain form the fibre of that fruiting body. Compounds such as tryptamines (which include neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine and melatonin alongside related agents such as dimethyltryptamine, psilocin and bufotenin) are the fructose, the sugars, the energy of our consciousness. 

By increasing those levels for brief moments in time, I’ve learned many lessons from psychedelics over the years. But Dimethyltryptamine has been the greatest teacher of them all. Through using it in meditational practice, I’ve realised what is the thing behind all the different thoughts we have on a daily basis. The answer? A Thought. I, like you, am a Thought. And, if you follow the same logic, it is those Thoughts, themselves from a Thought, that danced together in the spirit realm on the night when my father passed from this world to the next. 

Harnessing the medicinal power of DMT has allowed me to remotely view “Ray”, discuss with other Thoughts his attributes, his faults, his reasoning and his motivations. Those drivers have been distilled over the years, purified by psychedelics. I have aimed ridiculously high in the past and fallen way short as a result. Painfully short. In younger years, I was never happy to have reached the moon when aiming for the stars. And yet when it came to my spiritual goal, I could feel myself making the same mistake all over again, the writing was on the wall. But, for the record, here it is: I aspire to be an angel. I don’t mean this in the Christian sense of the word. Nor the financial. My definition of an angel is an “Agent of Positive Change”. I thought, once again, my name was on the dressing room to the stage of disappointment. However, what continually surprises me is that, strangely, I achieve this most days, and perhaps there’s a chance that I’ve just achieved this with you. 

Thanks for reading. 

With Love,

Ray, Brighton, 2025

For back issues visit Instagram.com/SDOAM.TheRayman or substack.com/@sdoamtherayman 

Brighton, Brighton Life, Co-op

The fight for the soul of Seven Dials by Amr Tabari

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When I first moved to this country in 2014, I was desperately homesick. Everything made me cry. If I went shopping and saw something unfamiliar, like avocado hummus, I cried. If it was too cold, I cried. Every reminder of how far I was from home was enough to bring tears to my eyes.

I remember one day, sitting in Latina Deli Café, just around the corner from Albert Road where I lived at the time. Adelia, the owner, served me a cappuccino and asked, “Do you want anything else?” What I wanted to say was, “Yes, I want to go home.” But instead, I stayed quiet, holding back tears. She must have noticed, because she gently tapped my shoulder and said, “If you need anything else, I’m right here for you.”

That moment stayed with me. Latina Deli Café became more than just a café. It was a place of comfort, connection, and community. It was my anchor.

So when I learned that Co-op was evicting Latina Deli Café, I felt a duty to act. As Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said: “Actions are judged by their intentions.” My intention was simple: to show Co-op that Latina Deli Café isn’t just a business, it is part of the community’s soul.

Latina Deli Café represents something bigger. It’s cosmopolitan, bringing flavours of Portugal, Spain, and Latin America to Brighton. It’s where strangers become friends, where conversations flow, and where people leave feeling a little lighter.

I also knew the reality. Co-op had acted legally. They bought the building and had the right to evict. But legality doesn’t erase responsibility to the community. My mission was to make them listen.

So I upgraded to LinkedIn Gold and began contacting Co-op’s leadership directly. I emailed their CEO daily, commented on her posts, and made sure the executive team knew what was happening in Seven Dials. At the same time, I organised a community action, not a protest but a gathering, where I gave a speech announcing that I would boycott the Co-op store in Seven Dials.

This activism came at a cost. Online, I received abuse and suspicion, even from some within the campaign. While I expected to give and receive love, I encountered animosity and doubt about my motives. But I didn’t let that stop me. My record in Brighton, from volunteering with homelessness projects to helping keep our parks and squares clean, speaks to my commitment to the community.

Throughout, I stayed in close contact with Adelia. She guided me with wisdom, correcting me when I needed it, and helping me deal with hostility constructively.

Then something remarkable happened. On the day Adelia announced she felt heard and respected by Co-op and was organising a farewell party. I received an invitation to meet their senior executives in Manchester. After weeks of persistent emails, some strongly worded, they were willing to listen.

I travelled to Manchester with a presentation of ideas. I urged Co-op to invest in Seven Dials, to engage with the community, to repair their reputation, and to show they could be more than just a corporate presence. I suggested partnerships with local charities, Brighton & Hove libraries support, and a number of community initiatives. To my surprise, they were receptive. And yet, not everyone in the local campaign welcomed my efforts. I was told I was “campaigning on my own,” when in reality, I was simply staying true to my values. 

As a proud British citizen of Palestinian heritage, my approach reflects my culture: to act with integrity, to fight for community, and to speak up when something feels unjust.

The question remains. The community doesn’t want independent shops like Latina Deli Café to disappear. But Co-op has acted within the law, and they are here to stay. Do we keep fighting them, or do we take a pragmatic approach, ensuring their expansion aligns with the community’s needs and values?

For me, the answer lies in dialogue, accountability, and realism. Co-op must show genuine commitment to Seven Dials. And if they do, perhaps we can embrace them, not as a faceless corporation, but as a neighbour who has finally learned to listen.

At the end of the day, a difference in opinion does not mean a difference in love for this community. Shops, corporates and businesses come and go (sometimes forever) but what stays is Seven Dials and its people. The community and its spirit are here to stay.