Archive for February 10th, 2013
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I was invited to Eric Sykes’ memorial at St. Martins-in-the-fields, just off trafalgar square last week. It was an upbeat memorial , Eddie Izzard made a speech and set the comedy tone and Robert Lindsay , Peter Alliss , Tim Davie and Bill Kenwright also spoke. It was full to the rafters with family and friends and lots’ of actors and comedians. The service closed with the RAF band playing the theme tune to his 70’s sit com “Sykes” .
February 10th, 2013
I was invited to the House of Commons a while ago to do an interview with Tony Benn which took place last week. It has been 15 years now since I completed the portrait of him and they wanted to do an interview with us discussing the portrait for documentation. It was lovely to see Tony again, the last time I saw him was on one of his tours about 10 years ago in Telford but we’ve kept in touch over the years with Christmas cards and telephone conversations. His son Hilary Benn was asking the questions. It’s amazing how much momentum portraits of people in the public eye gather over the years, I’d still say that this portrait is one of the pictures that I’m most asked about, they tend to take on a life of their own afterwards. I hadn’t seen the picture for a while and it’s strange how you forget the scale of some of these paintings, it was much bigger than I had remembered, even within the scale of Portcullis House. This was the first of these interviews so I guess they’ll see how it goes but I’ll put a link to it once it’s published.
February 10th, 2013
Just before I went to Eric Sykes’ memorial I had a screen test for an art TV show on Sky which was an interesting experience. It’s all in the balance at the moment and you know “us actors” don’t like to jinx anything, I’ve probably said too much already.
February 10th, 2013
Here’s new drawing or Ray, who kindly posed for me with his full body tattoo. It’s a drawing and will be in the Winter Show at Plus One gallery next week.
February 10th, 2013