I love Grayson Perry. You might almost call him the anti-Russell Brand: a genuinely talented artist who also has some very interesting stuff to say — as he’s demonstrating yet again in his highly entertaining new series Who Are You? (C4, Wednesdays).
It ought to be ghastly and it ought to be pretentious: a trendy ceramicist known at least as much for his transvestism as for his wackily decorated, hugely fashionable pots meets up with people from diverse backgrounds so that he can explore the theme of identity and then exhibit creations inspired by them at the National Portrait Gallery.
When I tell you that one of those people is a reality TV star called Rylan (winner of last year’s Celebrity Big Brother; he came fifth on The X Factor in 2012, in case you wondered how he got to qualify as a celebrity), your heart will probably sink still further. But I urge you: catch up with last week’s episode on More4, if you haven’t seen it already. The scenes involving another of Perry’s subjects, Chris Huhne, are among the funniest and weirdest you’ll see on TV all year.
Perry first meets Huhne at home on the eve of the perjury trial verdict which will decide whether or not he’s going to prison. Odd, you might think, to spend your condemned man’s final dinner (lentils, pan-fried fresh tuna) not à deux with your beloved (in this case Carina Trimingham), but à trois with a pushy, nosey, cheeky-chappy artist (plus TV crew) who wants to peer into the deepest recesses of your soul.
But that’s because Huhne is odd. Seriously odd. There’s something remote and otherworldly about him, like he’s been sent to earth from another planet with an incomplete rulebook on how it is that normal human beings ought to behave and, perhaps more significantly in Huhne’s case, feel.
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