The potter's wife

Philippa Perry, on the face of it,
doesn't have much in common
with her husband. She's a
psychotherapist from a
prosperous middle-class family;
lie's a working-class trans-
vestite potter (together below).
But they got on as soon as they

met, 22 years ago on a creative-
writing course, and "we've
never stopped getting on. My
experience of meeting Grayson
was: there is something in you
that I need, and I need to hold
onto it. It's his ability to be
himself. I like that and I've
learned from it." She knew he
had a penchant for frocks
before they began dating,
and it does not bother her.
"Wearing a dress is a sign of
sanity," she told Rachel Cooke
in The Observer. "He feels like
he really wants to wear one, so
he does; it doesn't hurt anyone.
It's a super-sane thing to do."
But his sudden rise to fame,
with his Turner Prize victory in
2003, did come as a bit of a
shock. "Our life got very
exciting. We'd get invited to
lots of dos. And I took it as a
personal compliment. I like to
twist things round. 1 discovered
him! I'm a good picker! But the
downside was that suddenly
everyone wanted to talk to
Grayson. They weren't
interested in me. That did
knock me over. The other thing
was that when it all happened.



being a slightly insecure person,
I thought: 'Oh, he won't want
me any more.' But he does, so
that's nice."