Grayson Perry

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand seven.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is the artist Grayson Perry. He's famous for two things his pots and his frocks. His classically shaped vases are meticulously crafted and highly decorative, but the impact of their immediate beauty is subverted somewhat by the darkly disturbing nature of the scenes they often depict. Paedophilia, death, and sadomasochism are recurring themes. Indeed, he himself survived a traumatic childhood, riven with aggression and insecurity, retreating at a young age to a fantasy world of imaginary characters, and discovering relief in the illicit thrill of dressing up in secret in his sister's ballet clothes.

Presenter1:06

In two thousand and three he won the highly prestigious Turner Prize for his ceramics. He chose to collect the award wearing a lilac party frock and a bow in his hair.

Presenter1:16

The art world's been good to me, he says. There aren't many other worlds that would be so accepting of a transvestite potter from Essex. Grayson, does it bother you that you seem as well known for your transvesticism as you do for your art?

Grayson Perry1:30

Um, sometimes slightly, but I mean, I knew there was always gonna be good PR value in wearing a frock. And if if I have a label as a transvestite potter, at least I have a label, you know, so I'm I'm not gonna regret it.

Presenter1:42

And when you see pictures of yourself then in the media, and and indeed certainly when you won the Turner Prize, did it make you think that maybe it hadn't been a wise choice to wear the dress to the award ceremony? Should you have gone as yourself?

Grayson Perry1:54

Oh god no. I mean I'd got there by mucking about. I mean I regard making art as mucking about. And if that's how I got there, then that's how I was going to continue. And it doesn't done me any harm at all. You know, PR these days is a big part of even the most serious art because there's so much out there in the cultural landscape.

Grayson Perry2:16

To get attention

Grayson Perry2:18

It's very important.

Presenter2:19

But what about it devaluing what you do? I mean, there's an incredible amount of

Grayson Perry2:23

I'm interested in where this word devalue comes from. I think there's a kind of snobbery about.

Grayson Perry2:29

About celebrity in the arts, about in the serious arts. And yet, those people that complain, say, about Tracy Emin and her autobiographical art are the first ones to watch the kind of T V Don banging on about the the sensational aspects of Caravaggio or Toulouse Lautrec. So I think there's a slight hypocrisy there, really.

Presenter2:49

The shark man, Damien Hurst, once said of you that if he wasn't an artist, I'm sure he'd be a serial killer.

Grayson Perry2:57

Ha ha ha.

Grayson Perry2:58

Well, I'm not I am a I'm fully aware of my dark side, that's for sure.

Presenter3:02

And that's what we see on the pots very often. The Dark Side

Grayson Perry3:06

I think that's a headline that often gets said. I think a lot of my work is about other things than those subjects you listed. But yeah, the dark side, because it's not what we expect from decorative art, I suppose. And I like I mean, I don't see decorative art as a criticism of it. I think decorativeness can be just as profound as ugliness. But there's somehow this idea that the truth has to be hard, you know. And I made a pot called The Soft Truth, because

Grayson Perry3:35

I think that we we can be kind of coaxed into looking at the more uncomfortable things in life, and that's what my work my work is kind of it kind of sneaks up on people and seduces them, and that's fine, I like that.

Presenter3:46

Tell us about your first record.

Grayson Perry3:49

Well, when I was nominated for the Turner Prize, you know, it was a very big thing for me. And I thought, right, I'm going to have some special outfits made for this sort of opening and for the ceremony. And it was about the time my daughter was about, how old would she be then? She would have been 11. She was just starting to be interested in music. And I was driving down to my dressmaker's to pick up a dress and

Grayson Perry4:11

I

Grayson Perry4:12

Just pushed the stereo on in the car, and this record was on, and it just hit me because the opening lines, you know.

Presenter4:20

What is it?

Grayson Perry4:20

What is it? Always pick last for teams. I wore my sister's jeans. You know, I used to be the loser kid. Yeah, and I thought now I'm not. Yeah, it fitted.

Speaker 34:28

Was always been glass for teams I wore my sister's teens I was a loser kid

Speaker 34:38

The teachers didn't care, they just left me sitting there I don't know what I did

Speaker 34:47

But since then such a sensation

Presenter4:58

Busted and loser kid. It's been a long journey, Grayson Perry. Twenty five years from when you first started studying art to winning the Turner Prize. How did you feel in the moment that you won the award?

Grayson Perry5:10

Oh god.

Presenter5:11

Yeah.

Grayson Perry5:11

Odd. Well, um.

Grayson Perry5:14

Yeah, I thought, oh, I'm allowed here now.'Cause I always had this fantasy that uh someone was going to tap on my shoulder and say, No, sorry, love, you're not the kind of person that has exhibitions in museums and and receives prizes. And I think that's a sort of class thing and a and a kind of uh

Grayson Perry5:29

Sort of self-worth issue type of thing was a a fantastic validation.

Presenter5:34

Even at the at the time though, there there's a lot of debate and it continues, the debate about whether or not ceramics is an art or a craft. And I imagine doing what you do, you get rather rather teased off with that.

Grayson Perry5:45

I play on that because often the mechanism I think for kind of success in the art world is kind of, oh, good rebellion, welcome in. And I always felt there was a charge around that idea that ceramics was somehow lesser, a sort of a second-class thing to do. And I think Kraft is seen as the kind of pretentious next-door neighbour who wants to be invited to the big art party. But perhaps the art world going, oh no, you're too desperate to be invited. And also.

Presenter6:16

And also female as well. I mean, traditionally those were those were the female arts, weren't they? Embroidery and pottery and ceramics.

Grayson Perry6:18

To me that's

Grayson Perry6:20

Go ahead of the

Grayson Perry6:22

I'm not the first transvestite potter. There was a a Native American guy who who there's a l big tradition of kind of gender swapping in Native American culture. And weaving was what men did. So he had to change to pottery when he started sort of living as a woman.

Presenter6:36

L you say Living as a Woman, it's interesting those delineations, because for a lot of people they are confusing. People uh mix up transvesticism with transsexuality, with well, less so now, but occasionally homosexuality. I mean, how how do you how do you quantify your transvesticism? Where is it in your head?

Grayson Perry6:55

Ooh. Well, I'm a man that likes wearing frocks, you know, and uh and all that entails. And sometimes it might be I like sort of I mean, I think when we dress up we are kind of having a little bit of control over the kind of attention we get.

Grayson Perry7:09

And so when I put on a frock, maybe I want the kind of frock attention. Sometimes I want there's an element of kind of uh humiliation in that. You know, a man in a frock. Oh, how ridiculous.

Presenter7:20

I should say, of course, for listeners I mean you're a relatively tall man. What what height are you?

Grayson Perry7:24

510, I'm probably on the margin of what you could get away with in Oxford Street. Right. See flatties.

Presenter7:27

And sing flat.

Presenter7:31

So you're five, ten, quite square jawed, square shoulders, got stuff.

Grayson Perry7:33

Since I was fourteen though, I have been most of my life, so I'm quite slim.

Presenter7:37

And the interesting look, is it part of the art? Is there art involved in it as well as artifice?

Grayson Perry7:42

Well, I put art into everything I do. You know, I try to do everything I do creatively, so I can't just turn it off when I get dressed up. I mean, I I d I think people like attention. I mean, attention is low grade love, as Alan de Bottom called it, uh and I think that's that's spot on.

Presenter7:57

But of course, you're not inviting love, particularly if you dress in a very flamboyant way. You are, as you've touched on, you're inviting.

Presenter8:04

Potentially ridicule, potentially humiliation.

Grayson Perry8:05

But

Grayson Perry8:07

But it's amazing, I mean, the human sort of sexuality, the way it can transform.

Grayson Perry8:11

A potentially damaging experience into a pleasurable one. That's what a lot of kind of

Grayson Perry8:18

alternative sexuality is about. It's about turning the kind of

Grayson Perry8:22

uh uncomfortable elements of a person's childhood into an erotic thrill. And I think that's a fantastic you know, what a brilliant survival mechanism that is.

Presenter8:32

Well, we'll talk a lot more, hopefully, about how you you found your path and how you found such a very particular and unusual path through your childhood in Just A Moment. Tell me what your next uh piece of music is.

Grayson Perry8:42

When I was a boy I loved uh aeroplanes and I loved making air fixed models of aeroplanes. My father had been in the REF so I probably that was part of it.

Grayson Perry8:53

This is the theme song to the 633 Squadron the film. And whenever I heard it, I sort of grabbed the nearest model airplane and ran round the room going AAAAAAA you know, to the to the music, because it just sort of summed up for me that kind of sort of yearning to fly and the power and the m I always see the cockpit as a kind of male wound.

Presenter9:40

The title theme to the nineteen sixty four film Six Three Three Squadron and memories there, Grayson, of your obsession with building those little air fix kits and the model airplanes when you were a boy, and what did you do, hang them from the ceiling?

Grayson Perry9:52

Uh

Presenter9:52

Yeah.

Grayson Perry9:52

Yeah, my bedroom was encrusted, almost rococo like, with Spitfires and Lancasters. I had, you know, dozens and dozens of them, all covered in dust and all lovingly built and then destroyed with a s air rifle later on.

Presenter10:06

And so you lived a sort of fantasy life as a child?

Grayson Perry10:09

Yeah, I had a very organized sort of fantasy world that gradually sort of uh accreted around my teddy bear, Alan Measles.

Presenter10:16

Yeah.

Grayson Perry10:16

Uh

Presenter10:16

Alan Measles

Grayson Perry10:17

Yeah, Alan Measles, and he was the benign dictator of my imaginary world.

Grayson Perry10:23

He was the kind of leader of the kind of underground guerrilla force that uh controlled the valley, which was my bedroom. My bedroom was a valley, so like the walls of the bedroom were the kind of cliff walls. And uh my candlewick bedsped was like the fields spread out with the little tufts with the hedges with the soldiers fighting behind them and things like that. And

Grayson Perry10:42

So I had a very powerful uh imaginary world, yeah.

Presenter10:46

What were you retreating from?

Grayson Perry10:48

Reality. Which was. Well, by this point, my stepfather had moved in, and I was terrified of him.

Grayson Perry10:55

And so I lived a lot of my life in fear, really.

Grayson Perry11:00

Because he could be quite scary. He had quite a temper on him, and uh his hobby was wrestling.

Grayson Perry11:09

So the two got kind of uh combined sometimes.

Presenter11:13

Your uh own father had left when you were about four years old.

Grayson Perry11:18

Yeah, he left when he found out my mother was having an affair with my stepfather, who was the milkman at the time.

Grayson Perry11:24

And then

Grayson Perry11:26

My father left.

Grayson Perry11:28

My stepfather moved in, and subsequently, my my mother had uh

Grayson Perry11:33

Two children with him as well.

Presenter11:35

When you were a little boy and you were leading this fantasy life in your bedroom with Alan Measles, did your mum wi was your mum aware that you were retreating?

Grayson Perry11:43

I don't know.

Grayson Perry11:46

She always said Oh I'll throw a match in there, it's so messy Whether that made me feel good or not, I don't know. She could be quite scary too.

Grayson Perry11:54

She had a temper on her.

Presenter11:56

I'm imagining a very sort of sensitive, highly intelligent little boy who was rather out of kilter with his surroundings. Is that clear?

Grayson Perry12:02

Yeah, I was kind of yeah, I was numb and uh a bit of a cuckoo in the nest, maybe.

Grayson Perry12:08

And

Grayson Perry12:10

Though my mother um

Grayson Perry12:12

appreciated the benefit of a good education me, she made sure I went to the a very good school.

Grayson Perry12:18

Um

Grayson Perry12:19

You know, I never there were no books in the house or or music particularly, something like that. So, it was a cultural.

Grayson Perry12:26

But um, you know, in many ways I had a normal childhood, i. e. a bit of divorce, you know, a little bit of low grade mental illness, a bit of violence, you know. These things that m loads of people living in Britain today have that.

Presenter12:39

Yeah.

Grayson Perry12:40

Happy child.

Grayson Perry12:41

I mean, looking back I wasn't.

Grayson Perry12:44

At the time I was probably perfectly happy in my imaginary world though. What's your next piece of music?

Grayson Perry12:50

Um, this is a piece I heard when I was kind of going through psychotherapy and finally admitting that I was an adult. Because I think teenager them nowadays can stretch till about thirty, you know. And

Grayson Perry13:03

So it struck me.

Grayson Perry13:06

Very strongly. And also, it has a real dark side, this record.

Grayson Perry13:11

So I think it's very important to kind of acknowledge the dark side.

Grayson Perry13:16

Um it's Tony Bennett. This is all I ask.

Speaker 313:18

This is all I ask.

Speaker 313:25

This is all I need.

Speaker 313:34

Beautiful girl

Speaker 313:38

Walk a little slower.

Speaker 313:44

When you walk by

Presenter13:49

Tony Bennett, and this is all I ask, chosen because you said it hints at what we all have, the dark side, it it it puts it out there on record. You you said a moment ago that you yourself had gone through psychotherapy, and be I suppose the reason for that is to try to solve the internal problems. As you have begun to solve them, is there a worry that, a bit like the comedian who goes into therapy, he isn't funny anymore, is there a danger that the artist who goes into therapy doesn't actually have anything to do with it?

Grayson Perry14:14

I think there's a lot of myths around therapy really. I think people are worried that their creativity is their quirks, when in fact I like to think that, you know, happiness is just as complex and interesting as sadness.

Grayson Perry14:27

And I regarded therapy as sort of someone coming into my metaphorical tool shed and clearing it up. Here's your tools, they're all on a nice rack. You've still got them, but you can just find them and you know what ones work.

Presenter14:40

When you were around about eight or nine, you you found a pastime that made you very, very happy. I I touched on it in the introduction. Explain what happened.

Grayson Perry14:50

Um in my fantasy world, you know, uh things happened like I would be taken prisoner of war.

Grayson Perry14:57

And then one day, as an extra kind of tweak on the humiliation, the the guards decided to dress all the prisoners in women's clothes. And this was an enormous turn on to me. And so I asked my sister if I could borrow some of her uh clothes and when I was about thirteen, I think.

Presenter15:13

What do you think it was hitting in you? What was it chiming with in you?

Grayson Perry15:18

Oh, I think the clothes are for me were symbolic of a kind of emotional range that I'd suppressed. I associated the clothes with a certain sorts of emotions, which would be kind of vulnerability and tenderness and sweetness and very sort of positive things like that. And so maybe they were a way of almost putting those emotions onto myself.

Presenter15:46

As a child, uh presumably once once you found that you enjoyed very much dressing up as a female, y that had to be a secret.

Grayson Perry15:55

Yeah, I was aware of that much, even though I kind of did it spontaneously without knowing there was such a phenomenon as transvestitism out there.

Grayson Perry16:03

I was pretty aware it wasn't something you shouted about.

Presenter16:05

So so how did you do it and how often did you do it then, say as a teenager?

Grayson Perry16:10

When I could, I merely had to skulk about.

Grayson Perry16:12

Except maybe sometimes once a week or something. I don't know.

Presenter16:16

What's your next piece of music?

Grayson Perry16:19

I always listen to The Fall when I reach a creative block because Mark Smith, he's a great example of I'll do it my way, I don't give a damn about anybody else. He's a real chairman of the Awkward Squad. And I think there's something aesthetically about the music of The Fall that always reminds me that

Grayson Perry16:40

Follow the line of most resistance.

Speaker 416:49

I appreciate that.

Speaker 417:03

I prefer.

Presenter17:14

The Fall and Hip Priest. So, despite this unsettled life at home, Grace and Perry, you did well in school. You were a smart boy. What were your school reports like?

Grayson Perry17:23

Oh, they were glowing until I was I hit puberty. I was top of the form, brilliant student. And then when I hit puberty it all unraveled terribly.

Presenter17:32

What happened?

Presenter17:33

Doom.

Grayson Perry17:34

Uh

Grayson Perry17:35

I was just distracted really by my inner turmoil, I suppose. And I I didn't do tha I dropped from sort of top of the form to sort of practically bottom over the course of one year.

Presenter17:45

Did the family notice? I mean, your mum and stepdad, were they worried about the the school performance plummeting?

Grayson Perry17:51

Uh the school noticed and

Grayson Perry17:55

Uh one point social services got involved, I remember, which was caused a lot of ruption. But it it was amazing that it sort of glossed over the problems and and didn't really have any impact on me. I I think I just wanted an easy life, so I didn't go and I you know, I was I was in it. I was fifteen, sixteen, I d I you know, I was in the middle of it. You don't ask a someone who's stuck in the middle of a tornado uh what's the weather? You know, like what what are the weather patterns today?

Presenter18:25

What was the tornado?

Grayson Perry18:27

It was, you know, uh me kitting puberty in the middle of uh

Grayson Perry18:33

And being screwed up, I suppose. Yeah. But then it reached a it reached a a point where I made remade contact with my father and that was probably the sort of uh catalyst for things to really kick off.

Presenter18:46

What happened?

Grayson Perry18:47

I I hadn't sort of had contact with him for many years, about eight years, and

Grayson Perry18:53

I found out where he lived and we got in contact again and then I within a very f short time I'd moved in with him and it was disastrous.

Grayson Perry19:02

And they found out I was a tranny while I was there as well.

Presenter19:05

How did they find out?

Grayson Perry19:06

My stepsister read my diary.

Grayson Perry19:09

and asked her mother what does transvestite mean? and she asked where did you read that? She said in Grayson's diary.

Presenter19:17

What happened immediately that that was discovered?

Grayson Perry19:21

Oh, they kind of, you know, ooh sent me to the doctor and booked me into the hospital psychologist, which I kind of, oh, I'm over it now.

Presenter19:32

Was there any adult anywhere who was sort of sitting you down and looking you in the eye and saying, Well, tell me about this, tell me what's going on?

Grayson Perry19:40

No.

Presenter19:44

Well, that must have felt very lonely.

Grayson Perry19:45

Yeah, well yeah, it was a difficult time. Yeah, it was very um

Grayson Perry19:51

Yeah. I think I just closed down and survived, you know.

Presenter19:54

Yeah.

Grayson Perry19:54

Did you

Presenter19:54

Do you think with the transvesticism I have to stop this? Did you try to stop it?

Grayson Perry19:58

Yeah, definitely, yeah. I mean, it was too dangerous, you know, and I convinced all around me that I had given it up for a couple of years, you know.

Grayson Perry20:05

Yeah.

Presenter20:05

You convince yourself.

Grayson Perry20:06

No Heavens no, I'm still sneaking off and having my stash.

Presenter20:11

And once you knew it had a name, and once you knew that other people did it.

Presenter20:15

Did that make it better?

Grayson Perry20:18

It meant I could go to the library and research it. I never met another transvestar until I was about 19. And that's quite an interesting, shocking moment, actually, because suddenly, you know, when you look in the mirror or swan about, you can kind of convince yourself that you're lovely, you know. But when you meet another tranny with their wonky wig and their slightly kind of two big shoulders, you kind of have to say, ooh, I'm a bit like that.

Grayson Perry20:42

And that's a difficult moment, you know. Suddenly you're confronted with men in dresses. And that's what you are, and that's fine, that's great.

Grayson Perry20:49

And um

Grayson Perry20:51

But it it yeah, there's a there's a kind of awkward moment there.

Presenter20:55

What's your next piece of music?

Grayson Perry20:58

Ah, but this reminds me of motorcycling. I've probably spent a lot longer on a motorcycle than in a dress. And I've had motorcycles all my life. And I think non-motorcyclists don't quite realize what an other world you inhabit at but a few feet away from the cosy confines of your car, you know. And any book this record for me sums up what it's like to sit at the traffic lights.

Grayson Perry21:22

On a motorcycle with over a hundred horsepower, and then it goes green.

Grayson Perry21:27

And

Grayson Perry21:28

Hang on Somebody once described it as a glimpse of hell.

Speaker 321:35

But it don't make no difference.

Speaker 321:38

Cause I ain't younger than me.

Speaker 321:41

Easy, easy, the only time I'm gonna be easy now.

Speaker 321:49

Beautiful.

Presenter22:02

Motorhead, killed by death. What sort of art were you doing in school? What was it your art teacher saw?

Grayson Perry22:07

I think my subconscious was leaking out all over the page actually. I mean, uh I did the normal kind of very detailed drawings and album cover riff-offs that kind of six formers do.

Grayson Perry22:19

But I think there was probably uh

Grayson Perry22:23

My psychology was writ large in the subtext of those works.

Presenter22:28

And where did you find uh pottery and ceramics?

Grayson Perry22:32

Uh after I left art college.

Grayson Perry22:35

I was on the dole and a squatter and somebody suggested it because it was a very cheap way of sort of keeping your hand in. I found I enjoyed it. I it suited my style very well. And I made small, precious, saleable objects. I mean I was selling my work from a very early stage, you know, when it was incredibly inept.

Presenter22:53

You don't throw pots, you coil them.

Grayson Perry22:55

Yeah.

Presenter22:56

What's the what what is the difference as an artist in doing that?

Grayson Perry22:58

Um

Grayson Perry23:00

Well why I b started coiling was because I could make large pieces easily because throwing on a wheel a large pot is incredibly skilful, difficult and needs huge shoulders to kind of you know manage that amount of clay. And uh coiling was I liked the fact that it was kind of a bit wonky. You know, they're never quite symmetrical, my pots, even though I've got pretty good at it over the years.

Presenter23:22

What do they sell for now, Top N

Grayson Perry23:24

Top end

Grayson Perry23:26

Thirty five thousand.

Presenter23:28

What did you start selling them for?

Grayson Perry23:30

My first work I sold for thirty quid.

Grayson Perry23:34

Yeah, and that was weak stole money then, so that was a good good number.

Presenter23:38

Pots, of course, you can't paint over them like you can a canvas. I mean, once it's it's been in the kiln and it's glazed and it's finished, there it is. If if you don't like it, what what do you do with it?

Grayson Perry23:49

They smash it.

Presenter23:50

You really smash.

Grayson Perry23:50

You really smash it.

Grayson Perry23:52

I quite enjoy that moment actually. It's kind of cleansing.

Grayson Perry23:57

And I keep a piece of each one I smash. So I have a whole archive of the pots that never made it. And I don't do it that often these days. Usually it's aesthetic rather than technical.

Grayson Perry24:07

The mistake.

Grayson Perry24:09

I'm less hard on my own work than I used to be. I used to smash a lot more. I probably used to smash about one in four.

Grayson Perry24:16

But now I'll probably I don't know. It's much less than that now.

Presenter24:19

So you keep the pieces to remind you of what you did like or didn't like about it.

Grayson Perry24:23

What I did like.

Grayson Perry24:25

Yeah,'cause there's always something on the pot that, you know, an experiment. I and I might look at a piece that occasionally in my studio and say, Oh, I could make a whole pot, you know, based on the combination of colors or

Grayson Perry24:35

Techniques that are in that small fragment. Yeah, beauty's an interesting concept actually, because it's not talked about much in the art world. It's like the elephant in the room.

Grayson Perry24:45

You know, because everybody talks about the concepts or the history or the meaning or the techniques, but they're very it's very difficult because

Grayson Perry24:54

Yeah, it's very tender, I think. That's what it is with artists, because that is the bit they hold closest to their heart, is that I am making things I find beautiful.

Presenter25:04

Um I'm not sure if it's coincidental, but at the time that you found Pottery you also found uh Philippa, your your your wife.

Grayson Perry25:10

No, actually I d that was the I mean I f Pottery was when I was about uh twenty two and and I met Philippa when I was about twenty six. Oh right, so a little bit of a

Presenter25:19

Yeah.

Grayson Perry25:21

But uh no, she's been, you know, the main other person in my life since then, for sure. I love her dearly.

Presenter25:30

What's your next record?

Grayson Perry25:32

Ah, this is for my wife really, because this is kind of the nearest we have to our song. And when she was pregnant with my daughter Flo, we went to an evening in Leytonstone in a pub.

Grayson Perry25:44

Karaoke Evening, and I croaked out my rendition of this song, and so it's always been our song.

Speaker 325:53

If I made you feel set and best

Speaker 325:59

Girl, I'm sorry I was blind.

Speaker 326:06

You are always on my mind.

Speaker 326:13

You were always on my mind.

Grayson Perry26:14

is all my

Speaker 326:20

And maybe I

Presenter26:22

Willie Nelson and Always On My Mind.

Presenter26:26

Your alter ego who dresses up is called Claire. I mean effectively then there are three of you in the marriage.

Grayson Perry26:31

No. To borrow a phrase. No. I think the whole alter ego.

Presenter26:32

That to both.

Grayson Perry26:37

Phrase The media's very fond of it and It's me in a dress.

Presenter26:42

It cannot be the easiest uh thing living with not just an artist, but living with a transvestite. Did she accept that from the beginning?

Grayson Perry26:49

Oh, God, yeah, our first date was to a tranny club.

Grayson Perry26:52

You know, and there was a lovely moment when she came. I said, Could you come round my house? Because I didn't have a car. And she came round my house to pick me up. And she had got the idea that a tranny club would be like a drag club. So she had got dressed up very flamboyantly. She put her contact lenses in. I think she had a big blonde, curly wig on. And I was dressed up like a kind of businesswoman in a business suit. And I answered the door to her and she said, Oh, it's Grayson in. And I said, Oh, who wants him? And neither of us recognised each other. So that was, you know, that was a very funny moment. And she soon realized that tranny clubs are more like the WI on the whole.

Presenter27:28

Your daughter's a a teenager. I mean, teenagers are notoriously just embarrassed at even having parents. Never mind parents who necessarily are as well known as you are and as well known for being out on the public stage in a frock.

Presenter27:41

Does it bother her?

Grayson Perry27:42

We should never say it has. I mean, I've been very sensitive around it, but.

Grayson Perry27:48

You know, she's incredibly cool, my daughter. And, um,

Grayson Perry27:52

Handles it very well. And she's realizes that, you know, you don't die of embarrassment, which you think I think a lot of teenagers think they will.

Presenter27:58

Given that you didn't have such a great model, how how have you found being a parent?

Grayson Perry28:02

Well, it's i having a child is what kicked off

Grayson Perry28:07

a lot of my sort of problems that sent me into therapy.'Cause I think, you know, I think people have to beware that

Grayson Perry28:17

when their children reach an age when they themselves had problems, that is often a kind of trigger for a a a resurgence in the kind of uh emotional

Grayson Perry28:28

traumas, you know. So I think for me, yeah, having a child, it was tricky, yeah, but, you know, I worked through it and I think we have a pretty good relationship. I think my main problem with my daughter now is that I'm so busy. I probably don't see her enough.

Presenter28:40

What's your next record?

Grayson Perry28:43

I was sort of thinking, God, you know, I've had such a lot of pleasure out of being a Transvestite.

Grayson Perry28:48

I thought I would like to have a record that reminded me of that.

Grayson Perry28:52

And a couple of years ago I made a film with this guy Neil Crombie about transvestism. And he put this record on and it has something of the the the kind of impossible yearning of it. The fact you've got all these guys, you know, not all are great physical specimens, but they're all kind of yearning for something incredibly sweet and

Grayson Perry29:13

I found it very moving and I think this record captures something of that.

Speaker 329:19

I make it alone.

Speaker 329:25

When the love is gone.

Grayson Perry29:25

The

Speaker 329:31

Still, you made your mind

Grayson Perry29:32

You made your mind

Speaker 329:37

Here in my

Speaker 329:44

They are flying.

Presenter29:44

Yeah, fly

Presenter29:47

Randy Crawford and Some day I'll fly away. For many years, Grayson Perry, you were the artist's artist, and and now you have this this considerable fame. Do you enjoy the fame?

Grayson Perry30:01

Yeah, I have a nice brand of fame. I can leave it in the wardrobe.

Grayson Perry30:05

'Cause nobody recognises me in the street normally, so it's okay, yeah. But if I put on a dress, yeah.

Grayson Perry30:10

I suppose I'm famous.

Presenter30:12

When did you take off as a collectible potter? I mean, Charles Saatchi bought, what was it, twenty-six of your pieces at once?

Grayson Perry30:19

Yeah, that wasn't till two thousand one, so it's fairly recently. I rose without trace, as they say.

Grayson Perry30:28

I mean, Opera Winfrey said an interesting thing. She said something like, If you don't know who you are when fame hits you, then fame will define you. And I think I kind of ha had a fairly good handle on who I was by the time I became successful. And so that was important, I think.

Presenter30:45

You talk about fun, and you've spoken about the dresses and PR.

Presenter30:49

You seem very straightforward, you seem very unpretentious for an artist.

Grayson Perry30:55

Well, I I've found that being kind of open and honest has never done me any harm, and so I kind of plug on. But then I think everybody tries to be open and honest, maybe, do they? I don't know.

Grayson Perry31:06

Maybe I'm just better at seeming like I am being open and honest. So you're not at all.

Presenter31:06

You see that?

Presenter31:09

So you're not at all. So I've been horribly fooled throughout this programme. What's your last record?

Grayson Perry31:11

Yeah, this program

Grayson Perry31:16

This is the soundtrack of a film Kyana Scotsi. It's one of my favourite films. And before we had our daughter.

Grayson Perry31:25

We thought we b we should go and do something that you can't do when you've got children. So we bought a motorbike in New York, me and Philippa, and we rode across the States in a big U shape. We went through all the national parks. And I can just remember sort of like traveling through the western deserts with with this music playing and it was just fantastic. Awesome. My ore muscles were worn out.

Presenter32:13

Prophecies from Philip Glass's sound track to the film Koyana Scatzi. So of course we give you the Bible, and we give you the complete works of Shakspere. What other book would you like to take, Gracie?

Grayson Perry32:23

Um I thought I'd better take an art book to look at pictures. And I was thinking about the idea that, you know, uh medieval peasants, they probably saw less imagery in a lifetime than we see in a in a day now.

Grayson Perry32:36

So I was thinking about altar pieces and one of my favorite art books, probably my favorite art book is this book of Gothic and Renaissance altarpieces. And it's a hero tome of an art book with fantastic quality pictures in it. And I'd just like to be able to look at that.

Presenter32:49

And what about your luxury?

Grayson Perry32:52

Ah, something quite boring really, which is like load of really good pens and paper, because I think it would drive me mad not being able to put out there what is in here.

Presenter33:05

And if the waves were to crash to the shore and wash threaten to wash away at the disks, which one would you run across the sand to save?

Grayson Perry33:12

I think the Philip Glass,'cause I could listen to that again and again.

Presenter33:16

Grace and Perry, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Anon

Presenter33:27

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.