David Hockney: Artist

Sunday Times.

'Ee by gum, I live in California, but I'm from the North and like smoking. Fancy a fag?' etc.

Stars, Cars And Crystal Meth: The Unlikeliest Confection

This is the unlikeliest confection: the life story of a promiscuous, gay, drug-using, Los Angeles PA ghostwritten by a highly esteemed English professor, literary critic and author. The conjunction is so odd I’m still blinking at the disconnect. But John Sutherland, who is emeritus professor of English at UCL and reviews books for The Times, is the father of Jack Sutherland and this is supposedly Jack’s story.

Jack was born in 1973 to an unmarried Irish shop assistant who came to England to have her baby and disappeared back to Ireland. He was adopted by John and his wife, both “eggheads”, who lived in a big house in Herne Hill. Jack should have had an idyllic childhood but three things told against him: first, he was bright but useless at school, probably because of dyslexia; second, he secretly knew he was gay; third, his father was an alcoholic — there were “blackouts, violence, even an arrest or two”.

But then, salvation. John was offered a prestigious job at a Californian university, moved the family to South Pasadena, and cleaned up. He has not touched alcohol since. Jack was then nine, and just embarking on his own addictions, starting with alcopops, graduating to vodka at 12, and then marijuana and LSD. All this, he says, because he didn’t want to think about his “crappy sexual orientation”. He hated being gay, and when, at 14, he lost his virginity to a man in a park, he was so revolted he threw up...

Lynn Barber's review of Stars, Cars And Crystal Meth in The Sunday Times.

This book has got lots of coverage in the broadsheets, dealing as it does with one of their favourite gay stories; the fallen woman saved!

This one even managed to get in the new scare word, chemsex.

PS Apropos of nothing, interesting to note how many acclaimed mis lit memoirs have been exposed as largely works of fiction.

Thought For The Gay: Jean Paul Gaultier

Jean Paul et ils grand-mère, Marie.

He thinks his grandmother might have steered him towards being gay. “I don’t think you are born gay. But I needed to be loved, like everyone else. And my grandmother, she lost her first child, a girl called Solange, when she was 14. And I saw some letters Solange wrote to my grandmother, and I saw that she finished them with a heart. So then, when I wrote to my grandmother, I put a heart — only because I wanted her to love me more. And maybe I reminded her of Solange. I never wanted to be a girl, but to please her and to have more love, it was the only way. She was very open-minded. When I was about 14, she gave me a book about a gay man and told me, “Read that book, and you will see — they are sick but they are nice people, be good to them.” Of course I don’t agree that gays are sick! But I think she always imagined that I could be very nice with them. At first I flirted with girls, but it didn’t go on. And later, when I was 17, 18 — because I didn’t have my first experience till I was 20 — I was thinking if Dior was gay and if St Laurent is gay, maybe if I work in fashion that means I am gay too?’

Lynn Barber meets Jean Paul Gaultier for the Sunday Times.

The Fashion World Of Jean Paul Gaultier From Sidewalk To Catwalk is at The Barbican from April 9th.

Fagburn interviewed JPG - struck me as the loneliest man I've ever met, felt I couldn't leave.

Nick Grimshaw: 'The Tabloids Have Already Given Him One...'

Another reason why Grimmy seems so young is that he has never been in love. Just before he started doing the Breakfast Show he gave an interview in which he said he was gay. “But it didn’t feel like, ‘Oh, I’m coming out!’ I hate it when people make a big thing of it. It was never a secret to any of my friends or family or anyone I worked with, I’d never pretended to have a girlfriend, but I think it was the time when I was starting to do proper grown-up press and it just felt right.”

His family knew he was gay all along. He remembers when he was six strolling into the sitting room in Oldham dressed in his mother’s bracelets and his brother Andy pronouncing: “He. Is. Gay.” Nobody fainted or screamed...

So then he was sure he was gay but he has still never had a serious relationship. He gets crushes on people but they seldom last more than a week. However, he thinks that could now change... 

"I just want to find someone who really does like me. There’s definitely been a change this year — and I’d like to have a boyfriend.”

The tabloids have already given him one — Harry Styles of One Direction — except that Styles insists he is not gay and they are just good friends...

Lynn Barber interviews Nick Grimshaw for The Sunday Times Magazine.

Early starts, mum and dad, famous chums, falling listeners, blah blah blah...
Before his big coming out interview in August 2012, some tabloids seemed more keen on outing young Mr Grimshaw as straight.

In 2011 The Daily Mail asked if Grimmy and Pixie Geldof were "more than just good friends"- even though he'd just told Heat magazine the TV stars he most fancied were Steve Jones and Bear Grylls. 

Grayson Perry: Pure Class

‘There is no such thing as good or bad taste,’ argues Grayson Perry. ‘Good taste is just something that doesn’t alienate your peers, that helps you fit in with your tribe’

Bold as brass
“Naturalness is a bit boring,” says Perry. The working class prefers “beauty you can measure with a ruler”: spray tans, big hair, fake breasts if you’re a woman, tattoos and pumped-up pecs if you’re a man — who ideally boasts a dazzling set of wheels.”

Goody two-shoes
“Underpinning all middle-class taste is an unconscious desire to project the idea that I am a nice person, with a shiny house, a shiny car and a shiny wife. Branded consumerism: bad taste. Organic food and cultural capital: good taste. But the good taste seems to involve a lot of consumerism, too.” Middle-class essentials include coffee, Ikea, Cath Kidston, olive oil, “retro vintage” and “green” baby clothes.

Tough at the toff
For the upper class, “taste is dictated by their ancestors beyond the grave. They don’t really have any taste at all; they’re just trying to hang on to what they’ve got. They’ll live in a tired house and drive a Morris Traveller. The posher the person, the less they have to prove.”

Postscript to a smashing Sunday Times Magazine interview with Grayson Perry.
Grayson has a new TV series and exhibition on the class/taste nexus coming up.
All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry starts on Tuesday at 10pm on Channel 4.
The Vanity of Small Differences is at London's Victoria Miro gallery from Thursday.
Can't wait.

Update: Start The Week: Grayson Perry at Charleston Festival.

Matthew Bourne: The History Of Ballet

"I’d taken it just so far in Swan Lake, but I thought: why are we beating around the bush? Can I take it a little bit further and actually show different kinds of relationships between men [in Dorian Gray], without it being uncomfortable for the audience? I wanted to show that male dancing can be lyrical and touching as well as macho. Everyone loves saying, ‘Oh, dancers are like athletes, they’re like footballers’ — as if that makes it okay. But they’re not all like that. But I don’t feel the need to keep pushing it now, so I’m happy to do Sleeping Beauty with a female lead...”

Cracking interview with the smashing Matthew Bourne by the cracking Lynn Barber - uncharacteristically gushing with nothing but praise - in The Sunday Times.
Though there's a recurring riff about gay men and youth - a constant obsession of straight people.

Asked whether ballet dancers pad out their packets, Matthew laughs and replies; "To be honest, I think a lot of the history of ballet has been about that. Seeing beautiful bodies is a big attraction that nobody ever talks about.”