You’d think Emma Barnett would want to put her feet up when she gets home from her 4am to 9.30am Today Programme shift, but the truth is that by the time most of us would be heading for a nap, she’s only getting started.
After a morning interviewing the day’s top news stars from industry leaders to prime ministers, the esteemed broadcaster — the BBC’s newest Today recruit and former Woman’s Hour host — then begins her latest side-hustle: scouting out new London landmarks, liaising with designers and — until recently — stuffing envelopes with copies of the new series of London colouring books that she and her husband, Jeremy Weil, launched last year from their kitchen table in Brixton.
“It’s very much a family business at this stage — our son [aged six] has even packed some envelopes,” Weil, 40, a seasoned entrepreneur, chimes in. He laughs, recounting a recent blunder which saw their son pack a book he’d already started to colour in. ”Thankfully [the recipients] took it very well”.
The couple, who met back when they were studying at Nottingham University (he studied business, she studied history and politics) and rarely do interviews together, certainly make a strong team. Weil, a lifelong Londoner who was born in New York and currently works as head of product at The Economist’s research division, The Economist Intelligence Unit, is the creative of the two. The idea for Colour Your Streets was born while he and Manchester-born Barnett were marching the streets of south-east London during maternity and paternity leave for their daughter, now 18 months old. They let their son take some photos of landmarks to copy and colour in at home, and wondered whether a colouring book like this already existed for their local neighbourhoods of Herne Hill and Brixton. When they realised it didn’t, they did what any good founder does and started their own.
Weil got to work immediately, harnessing his entrepreneurial background (his eclectic CV ranges from running a club night after university to consulting at Deloitte and even working as a warden at Buckingham Palace) to mock up designs online. Barnett, naturally, is the communicator, promoting the business on social media and liaising with book shops and other possible stockists (Fulham Palace and the London Transport Museum are among the notable stockists so far). “We don’t have a lot of overlapping skills,” she laughs. “But we’re both good at packing envelopes.”
Mapping London alongside two fulltime jobs and parenting two children under six is certainly an ambitious project — and perhaps an unlikely one for a woman already preoccupied with hosting a live radio show two to four days a week, publishing her own newsletter and writing a fortnightly column for the i paper.
But Barnett is exuberant about her new position as a co-founder. She lights up when talking about plans to expand the books to cover museums and National Trust sites, and is delighted to recount some of the messages they’ve had from fans as far away as New Zealand, requesting books of the London areas they haven’t lived in for 35 years. “The world is not the most joyous place at times and my focus a lot of the time is very much on what’s wrong rather than what’s right — so the books have felt like pure joy,” she says.
There have been heartening moments, like the Kingston charity offering the couple’s books to children in A&E — and also funny ones, like the time Barnett’s BBC colleague Jeremy Vine featured the books on his show after ordering his local Chiswick edition at 4am for his daughter who’d gone away to university, not knowing Barnett was behind it. She and Weil woke up to a flurry of orders. “I messaged him saying ‘Hi, it’s actually me, it was my husband’s idea’,” she laughs. “That was a bit of a jaw-dropping moment.”
The pandemic made people really take stock in where they lived and get to know their streets... There’s a huge amount of pride in people’s areas
The books — sold online and printed on recycled paper with vegetable-based inks — certainly make a thoughtful gift at a time when there is increasing focus on one’s neighbourhood. “The pandemic made people really take stock in where they lived and get to know their streets — there’s a huge amount of pride in people’s areas,” says Barnett, referencing a recent chat she had with the new editor of British Vogue, Chioma Nnadi. “She said that you are now even more likely to see the latest fashion or the latest food in Peckham than the centre of London. I think that’s worth celebrating.”
Barnett and Weil receive emails every day from people requesting their areas (a top museum leader recently requested Penge) or offering ideas for special editions, such as a book purely focused on London’s bridges. They try to crowdsource each landmark and make it specific as possible, whether it’s Peckham Rye train station, Dulwich College Great Hall or a specific fruit and veg stall in Bermondsey.
The couple can write their lives through the books already: Manchester and Brooklyn where they were born; Nottingham were they went to university; Covent Garden piazza where they met for their first date before seeing a show at Ronnie Scott’s (”I was really nervous,” says Barnett of meeting Weil next to the Royal Opera House in their summer holidays before the third year of university).
The London list goes on: Hammersmith where she had her first journalism job at Media Week; Notting Hill where they first moved in together after Barnett had spent a year living with her best friend above a chicken shop in Ladbroke Grove. They married at the New West End Synagogue in Bayswater in 2012 and rented a flat in Notting Hill for eight years before moving south of the river to Brixton in 2013. Their favourite south-east London restaurant, Lulu’s, features in the Herne Hill edition of the books.
Another joy is the excuse the books have given Barnett, an “endless tourist”, to explore. They had Weil’s 40th birthday at home over the weekend, but Saturdays and Sundays are usually spent getting to know new areas of London, whether that’s De Beauvoir — the latest request from Colour Your Streets fans — or Nunhead Cemetery, a new favourite viewpoint they they recently visited for the first time. “We sat there and had our sandwiches with our son and I was like: ‘Wow, we should have come here before’,” says Barnett. “To grab London is hard, but we’re trying to grab some of its magic and put it into the pages. I think what we’ve captured so far is incredible... but it’s a massive task.”
A massive task indeed. The couple have published 65 books so far, churning out two or three new editions a week, and recently moved their labelling and shipping processes to a fulfilment centre in Nottingham so they, as founders, can focus on the bigger picture. There are no plans to stop. Barnett is as tenacious about being a co-founder as interviewing politicians, it seems — and just as laser-focused on the detail (”I like colouring very detailed things: leaves, fruit, ornate wrought iron... the smaller the better”). After completing London and ideally the rest of the UK, they plan to go global. “We’re already getting requests for Madrid, Barcelona, Paris... So yes we have some work trips planned,” she tells me with a wink.
What started as a family business has certainly benefitted them on a family level, too. The couple try to limit the time their children spend on screens and a happy side-effect of the business has been a never-ending collection of colourings for their son and his friends — Barnett and Weil’s way of handling the giant social experiment that is parenting in a digital age. They leave what they call a “fun bag” by the door at all times, filled with colouring books and games. “We didn’t create it because of that, but it ties in with that movement of parents are going through at the moment,” she explains.
The books aren’t just for kids, of course. Colouring has skyrocketed amongst adults since the pandemic and the couple say it’s offered them both a sense of mindfulness amidst the chaos of family and working life. Barnett listens to music while she’s colouring because even as a broadcast obsessive, radio would feel like too much like work. Weil says he’s such a perfectionist he has to start again if the pencil ever goes over a line.
All of which must be challenging, given the chaotic, imperfect city the couple have chosen to live in. “What I love about London is you can’t finish it — the minute you think you know an area, something else will pop up in it,” Barnett says, smiling at the enormity of the task. She and Weil could have their work cut out, then, if they’re looking to complete the city they’ve chosen to make home. But that, it seems, is exactly the fun of the whole thing.
