Grayson Perry: 'my audience is the well-educated left-leaning middle classes. So I make them suffer for that'

Let us be clear. Grayson Perry does not do stand up.

"I did this lecture at the Southbank and Sandi Toksvig said to me, 'You should do stand up'. I don't call it stand up though. I'm not one of these people that stands over the mic and tries to get a laugh every 15 seconds," he tells me, seated in his Islington studio, a tatty desk and a couple of steaming mugs of instant coffee between us. "I do go for the laughs though. Definitely."