Nicola Baird with daughter Nell and husband Pete

SOME of Islington’s most familiar faces gathered on Monday to celebrate a treasured interviewer who chronicled them on her online blog.

More than 40 people who have featured in environmental journalist Nicola Baird’s blog, Islington Faces, were at the Lamb pub in Holloway Road to celebrate her 250th interview.

Her interviewees vary from a car washer poet from Trinidad to a former BBC Radio 4 journalist who has donated his entire art collection to a gallery. Ms Baird has uploaded one story a week for the past five years.

Jane Howell, Tim Sayer and artist, art collector and costume designer Annemarie Norton

“What’s happening when the 200,000 people who live in this borough go home? That’s what I’m curious about knowing – what makes people live or work here?” she said.

“So I ask questions. A lot of who, what, where, when, why questions.

“I love knowing why people came here and it’s so often a place of refuge, or a magnetic draw because friends and family settled here first.

Lamb landlord Adrian Clarke

“I now know a lot more people than I will ever know. My village has got a lot bigger.”

Her best interview tip is to “just keep asking”.

Ms Baird lives in Finsbury Park with daughter Nell, 16, and husband Pete May, 58, who is writing a book about mountain climbing.

Nell says her mother’s work has inspired her to become a journalist and shaped her decision to study English Literature at A-level.