Extraordinary Portraits: Bill Bailey, David James and BBC show participants on Loading Bay exhibition for Bradford 2025

But the BBC television showcase Extraordinary Portraits, presented by Bailey, is a notable example of efforts to redress the balance.

The programme matches unsung heroes with artists, who create a portrait of their sitters, celebrating people who might not usually get the public recognition they deserve.

Now, the works revealed in the latest series of the show have been put on display in a free exhibition at new Bradford venue Loading Bay as part of the 2025 UK City of Culture year.

Bailey was among the guests who turned out for an opening event on Tuesday, March 11, alongside former England goalkeeper David James - himself an artist, commissioned in the show to portray Gill Sayell, who paved the way for women’s football in the UK- alongside others featured in the current fourth series.

“You look at the history of portraiture and it’s the great and the good,” says Bailey. “The aristocracy, the well-connected, royalty. Usually blokes, let’s be honest. It’s usually supercilious blokes on a horse looking down at you, going: ‘Yes, I’m very worthy’. That’s most portraits. I mean, that’s a bit of a generalisation but you get the general idea - it was very much about wealth and power.

“What this show is, it democratises the nature of portraiture. It shows that, actually, it’s about ordinary people doing amazing things. But why shouldn’t these people be celebrated in art? In fact, it’s more relevant to all of us. It’s more current, more contemporary - it’s sort of a snapshot of modern Britain.”

Featured in the series are campaigners, people living with cancer, foster carers, life-savers and those who have undertaken incredible feats of endurance.

Footballers, too. Former Liverpool and Manchester City goalkeeper James usually paints for himself and has sold work for charity, but his painting of Sayell - who played for England in the unofficial Women’s World Cup in Mexico in 1971 aged 14 - presented a more public challenge. The FA had banned women from playing on affiliated grounds in 1921 and that lasted for 50 years.

The portrait includes details such as a pair of scissors, symbolising how Sayell would cut her hair short as a child to pass as a boy so she could play the sport she loved.

For James, the portrait also gave him a chance to combine his passions for art and football - two areas of culture which are not too often found together.

“One of the things I talked about many years ago was how football and art, particularly painting, for some reason do not marry up,” says James, though he mentions exceptions such as the work of LS Lowry, whose painting Going to the Match shows sports fans filing towards a stadium.

“I just put that down to football being a very disposable industry - when someone scores the winning goal, everybody’s got it on their phone within 0.3 seconds and it’s forgotten about a minute or two after. So the idea of getting this iconic moment in football and putting it into painting doesn’t marry up. Having said that, I’ve done loads of paintings to celebrate football. With this (the portrait of former Arsenal player Sayell), it is a football painting.”

In the first episode of the series, which started airing in February, Wales-based artist Oriane Pierrepoint was matched with sitter Clare Sacco, a Gateshead woman who was first diagnosed with cancer aged 25. Following surgery she was thought to be in the clear, but four years later a check-up showed the cancer was back and it is now stage four and incurable.

Clare has since founded Embers, a charity to support people aged 18 to 40 who face an incurable or terminal prognosis.

Oriane portrayed Clare in charcoal, with a golden necklace the only coloured feature in the highly realistic piece.

The artist, aged 28, says: “There were so many big themes to tie into one single portrait, there was almost too much information to take on but I think charcoal was the right shout. It’s tonally dramatic, so it reflects that emotional turmoil that’s going on. The firing of the charcoal, making it myself, was a really nice metaphor for Clare’s journey and highlighting her family heirloom in gold leaf just tied it all together, so I think I managed to get it all in there. But it was definitely a daunting task.”

Oriane was also conscious that she would be “creating a legacy for Clare that her family can look upon well into the future,” she says.

“And then obviously the pressure of having it on national TV as well. So many sleepless nights.”

Clare, 31, speaking alongside Oriane at the Bradford event, says she was “completely overwhelmed and shocked” when her portrait was revealed.

“Totally just privileged to have had the opportunity to have a portrait like that done of me, because it just didn’t seem like something that would be done. So it was definitely a privilege and a privilege to be paired with Orianne, who is incredible.”

The Extraordinary Portraits episode on Friday, March 14 was about Suffolk artist Karen Turner’s painting of 20-year-old Millie Anna Prelogar, a Windsor-based campaigner for people, like herself, with Down’s syndrome.

The canvas shows Millie with a broad smile to represent her joyful and trailblazing personality.

“I feel honoured, I feel proud, I feel really excited,” says Millie. “I feel passionate that my artist covered everything. It was incredible how they painted it. I really, truly love it.”

Karen adds: “My paintings are about people, but especially women, taking up space. So whether that’s physically or whether it’s socially or in terms of people’s ambition. The main subject is women with larger bodies because we’re told to shrink, we’re told to be small and we’re told to look a certain way. But beyond that, making sure that people feel like they can live the life that they want rather than one that society has told them should be the limits of their ambitions, which is why this is such a good pairing because obviously Millie is smashing stereotypes and that’s what I’m trying to do with my work. I’m trying to inspire people and encourage people to go out and just grab their dreams.”

Loading Bay is a ‘pop-up’ opened this month on Drake Street in Bradford city centre, where a disused former M&S storage depot has been transformed into a temporary venue to present gigs, comedy nights, exhibitions, theatre shows and even live video games across two performance spaces and a gallery.

Bailey was full of praise for Loading Bay and the stand up comedian also pledged to test some of his future work-in-progress routines at the venue, which won cheers and applause from those listening to speeches at the event.

“I think art should be everywhere,” he says. “Art should be for public consumption, it shouldn’t just be, necessarily, as it has been over the years and centuries, collected by people and squirrelled away into private spaces. It should be in public spaces. And I think that this is a wonderful idea. It’s a great idea and a great way to kick off this new venue.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen (the art works) all in one place. Up until now, we’ve only seen the artists and sitters in each programme. Seeing them all together - it’s a great little exhibition.”

Extraordinary Portraits with Bill Bailey is now open for the public to see for free at Loading Bay until Sunday, April 6.