Grayson’s Art Club
The Great British Intelligence Test
Rating: 
Three cheers for the irascible Maggi Hambling. While celebrities were falling over themselves to appear on Grayson’s Art Club (C4), the 74-year-old sculptress announced that either she did it her way or everyone else could get stuffed.
First of all, she wasn’t doing any of this video-link, Zoom app nonsense. If Grayson Perry wanted to interview her in lockdown, he could use the phone, like all normal people did before the virus struck.
Being a Proper Artist, Grayson (pictured) promises to organise an exhibition in a real gallery . . . though whether anyone will ever again want to cram into a shop in Bloomsbury to rub shoulders and drink warm white wine is a moot question
Secondly, if C4 sent a camera crew, they’d have to put up with her chain-smoking. When Maggi stubs out a fag, she already has another in her lips and is reaching for her Zippo lighter. (Grayson tutted about ‘health risks’.)
Thirdly, no background music. This seemed a strange stipulation, until we saw her at work in her studio. The silence lent gravitas, even when she was just hanging a canvas. By contrast, a jaunty soundtrack made Grayson’s other guests, including Harry Hill and Noel Fielding, seem as though they were painting pictures for the longago children’s art show, Vision On.
Pictured: artist Grayson Perry
Vision On’s Tony Hart, who died in 2009, inspired generations of youngsters to draw because he believed everyone could do it. Grayson takes the same approach, encouraging viewers to send him their best work. Tony used to display his favourites in a TV studio ‘gallery’, for us to admire to the strains of a xylophone.
Being a Proper Artist, Grayson promises to organise an exhibition in a real gallery . . . though whether anyone will ever again want to cram into a shop in Bloomsbury to rub shoulders and drink warm white wine is a moot question.
Some of the artworks were quite lovely, such as the songbirds woven from coloured wire. Others emphasised the country’s can-do spirit, like Harry’s goggle-eyed Labrador, hewn from a lump of wood with an axe. ‘There’s a dog, in every log,’ sang the comic, before accidentally chopping off a paw with an over-exuberant blow.
Noel donned a yellow mac to scrawl a superhero in crayons — a rodent the size of a skyscraper, wearing cars for slippers. He called it Acid Mouse, and complained it was difficult to concentrate and talk to camera at the same time.
Think about that next time you’re pestering some poor cake-maker in the Bake Off tent, Noel. Grayson found it all uproarious, and kept barking his big, slow laugh: ‘Yahhah- hah-hah!’ He reminded me of someone, and at last I placed it: that’s the laugh Griff Rhys-Jones used to do, sitting face-to-face with Mel Smith, when he was trying to get a joke.
‘As they chatted away to each other, sharing nuggets of information, all they needed was a Labrador and a Siamese cat’ – Pictured: Dr Michael Mosley and Dr Hannah Fry on The Great British Intelligence Test
If Grayson was reviving Vision On, Michael Mosley and Hannah Fry were channelling the spirit of Blue Peter on The Great British Intelligence Test (BBC2).
As they chatted away to each other, sharing nuggets of information, all they needed was a Labrador and a Siamese cat.
Even though this was filmed before the crisis, the effect was deliriously DIY, with people stumbling through tests of memory and problem-solving. In the studio, men proved better than women at identifying emotions from photos of actors’ faces. Middle-aged readers were smarter at electronic puzzles than young video-gamers.
The pair were channelling the spirit of Blue Peter on The Great British Intelligence Test, BBC2
The presenters were quick to explain that we should ignore the results: more reliable data came from the 250,000 tests carried out over months across the country.
One conclusion was that 12-year-olds and 40-year-olds are, on average, equally good at solving problems. This is patent nonsense, and merely proves the tests were so general as to be meaningless. Would you trust a pre-teen to broker a mortgage, for example? Exactly . . .