Grayson Perry, the Turner-prize-winning-cross-dressing ceramic artist, is fast becoming a national treasure. So when you get the chance to go and see him speak in the flesh, at the inauguration of the Centre for Humanities Interdisciplinary Research Projects (CHIRP) and the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (CELL), there’s nothing to do but go along and be dazzled.

And dazzle he did. Fresh from his wildly successful Reith lectures and dressed up to the nines in a glittering kimono, Grayson Perry lived up to his reputation as one of the most alluring personalities in British art today.

After being introduced by Professor Lisa Jardine, and with a cheeky glint in his eye, he took to the stage at RIBA with a certain confidence, which seemed to say: “Listen up academia, I’ve got a thing or two to tell you. Yes, even you, the Provost in the second row. And don’t think I haven’t noticed you, Sue Lawley, at the back…” (more…)