Grayson talked to us dressed as his alter ego, Clare. It seems to be his public persona. Clare is a little girl in strap shoes, short socks and a lovely flowery dress, all petticoats, and a big lace collar. But Clare is also a powerful figure: larger than life. She takes the stage, she walks up and down it to talk to us and to show off, and she enjoys herself. She makes us laugh. Is the laughter partly a result of being made uneasy - the collision of opposite sexualities?
I can't remember anything Grayson said, apart from his map of the male brain, which put self-righteousness right at the front and was backed by an area called baloney, which is called upon when a man needs to justify himself. Very funny. He talked about men with beards and men who can mend things and men with sheds but I can't remember what his point was! Was is just to amuse? He thought that it's good for men to open up and talk about the deep stuff that affects them - he told us about his experiences of group therapy in which everyone cried every week - and he felt that was liberating. It worked for him.
He also told us that he was an alpha male and that he is very competitive on a bicycle. He has obviously done loads of cycling, and in races, he gloats as he overtakes.
But his competitiveness extends into his cross-dressing. He is proud to be the most famous tranny in the country, and he out-feminines all the women around him. He makes real women look drab and a bit lacking in effort. This is interesting. I am a cords and jumpers woman. I wear a kind of Barber jacket (not a real one, an M&S effort). I have no sexual persona. But I envy Grayson his lacy skirts. I do like lacy skirts. Somehow, it's more OK for him to wear them than for me to wear them, at our age. For him, it's a big camp show he can put on, but for me it's a one-way trip to ridicule. I think that for Grayson his cross-dressing is art : he denied this in the Reith lectures but it's obvious to me. He is making lovely tapestries now. You can see some on the web. The colours are gorgeous.
From the Guardian reviewer, who went to a few different events at the BAM festival:
Still, it's early days; given the demand for tickets, Kelly has already committed to BAM being an annual event, perhaps even the start of a movement. All movements need a manifesto, and it took
Grayson Perry in one of his Bo-Peepiest pink party dresses to provide one. Few men have done as much original thinking about what it means to be male as the transvestite potter, champion cyclist, therapy survivor, Turner prizewinner, devoted husband and father.
Grayson insisted that all we believed about men could be unbelieved – men can, despite the propaganda, multitask ("I never go upstairs without carrying something") – and they can prevail in the constant battle with testosterone and keep it in their pants (frilly or otherwise), if they put their minds to it.
He ended with a scribbled series of demands. "We men ask ourselves and each other for the following: the right to be vulnerable, to be uncertain, to be wrong, to be intuitive, the right not to know, to be flexible and not to be ashamed." He insisted that men sit down to achieve them. He received, deservedly, a standing ovation.
