'Terrifyingly frosty' children’s writer forced me out of my flat, claims Vikings actor

“Tormented”: Ivan Kaye (right) is suing his neighbour Amanda Lees for harassment

An actor claims he was forced from his £750,000 flat after being “tormented” by the children’s book author who lives downstairs.

Ivan Kaye — who has starred in TV shows The Borgias and Vikings, and played Dr Leroy in EastEnders — said his neighbour, Amanda Lees, was “terrifyingly frosty” towards him as she constantly complained about noise.

He claims she was “oversensitive” to sounds from his flat, regularly banging on the door and ceiling with “frighteningly angry” demands for quiet, and also let her garden grow so wild it blocks out light from his first-floor living room window. Mr Kaye, 57, is now suing Ms Lees, 54, for harassment and nuisance, arguing that her behaviour forced him to move out of the large semi-detached property in Ravenscourt Park.

He told Central London county court Ms Lees had called the police when he let three of his friends into the flat for coffee, and lectured him when he asked for permission to have pals over to watch an England match.

Amanda Lees

Mr Kaye said he decided to let out the flat, believing that would end the feud, but his tenants and estate agents were then subjected to a “tirade of complaints and anti-social behaviour”.

“She sort of thinks the place is all hers,” he told the court. “That’s what I think: that people upstairs is not for her.”

Ivan Kaye: the actor claims he faced a 'tirade of complaints and anti-social behaviour'
Rex Features

Mr Kaye said he knew Ms Lees had been at odds with her previous neighbour before he moved in, in 2013, and he contacted her to offer to investigate any noise issues.

His barrister Stephanie Lovegrove said Ms Lees’s refusal to co-operate was “a very early warning sign of a resistance to engage with the issue with a view to resolving it”. Giving evidence, Mr Kaye said a one-on-one consultation with an interior designer in his flat had been met by “screaming” from Ms Lees, and she had objected to innocuous noises by him and his girlfriend.

The house at the centre of the dispute

“It was a frightening level of anger being spat out and this was engendered by going in the kitchen, opening the fridge door and going out,” he said.

“Every time when you came in the front gate, you could see her at the wooden blind of her window, already warming up to be angry about us walking up the stairs or whatever.”

Student Shalini Chatterjee, 19, gave evidence of a “hostile environment” with Ms Lees when she became one of Mr Kaye’s tenants in 2015: “It felt like we were being attacked every day by someone who did not want us to be there. It felt very very personal.” Mr Kaye claims he is unable to sell the flat because of Ms Lees’s “monstrously out of control” garden and believes she either wants his home to stand empty or to buy it herself. He said his offer to prune the vegetation was turned down.

Ms Lovegrove said: “Mr Kaye is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He cannot let [the flat], he cannot sell it”. Ms Lees has written books targeted at teenagers including the Kumari trilogy, as well as satirical novels Selling Out and Secret Admirer.

Judge Richard Roberts said the case could be heard in her absence despite receiving a letter from her saying she was ill. He will rule on the claim for damages and an injunction against future harassment at a later date.

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