Why David Hockney and Alan Bennett are my favourite interviewees - Christa Ackroyd

But if they are meaning which ‘famous’ person have you come across who delighted you, enchanted you and will live with you forever, there are actually two.

What is more they often get mistaken for each other, so much so they sign each others names whenever a member of he public gets it wrong. They are David Hockney and Alan Bennett.

They both have so much in common apart from their West Riding roots, their glasses and their genius. They are both Yorkshire through and through.

They have never lost their accents and above all they are both mavericks unafraid of their sexuality and unafraid to observe and record with either pen on paintbrush what they see – whether it is to anyone’s else’s taste or not.

I have interviewed them both together and separately. Both are, shall we say not easy. But not in any awkward or difficult kind of a way. Alan is just so incredibly shy and he hates talking about himself.

His magic is when he talks or writes about others. David, well David is just David and among the first thing he asks or did when I last interviewed him was could he smoke ? Knowing full well he could not. And then threaten to walk away with a twinkle in his eye. Which he didn’t.

But this week I have decided now is the time to write about the latter, a true hero of mine in all his glory instead of waiting until he has left us. And if that sounds harsh and unnecessary gloomy, forgive me. He is 87 years old and not in the best of health.

Even he doubted whether he would still be around for the opening of his biggest exhibition to date in Paris this month. But he was. And like his work he was there in all his magnificence.

David Hockney is a life lesson to us all. And we don’t have to be a painter. He is still working every single day. He rises early because he finds the sun beautiful and empowering. Every day he is inspired.

Every day he wakes with an attitude that we could all do well to adopt that today is a day to be creative. And yes to be optimistic. A good day.

He may be frail – his two carers featured at the opening of the exhibition at the Louis Vuitton Foundation, both on the walls and in person, but his strength and passion power him through.

He needed a wheelchair certainly but his wit, his warmth, and his downright defiance was there for all to see, not just in the lifetime retrospective which adorned the walls, but in the bright in your face demeanour and attitude with his beautifully tailor checked suit and orange glasses with tie to match, as perfectly stylishly as his comment that he had managed to live long enough to be there.

His observation about his Yorkshire accent, which he has never lost despite homes in California, France and yes Bridlington was pure Hockney.

When talking about being mocked when he went to London for his Northern twang. His response? ‘I’d look at their drawings and think ‘Well if I drew like that, I’d keep my mouth shut’.’

Yet Hockney is completely without cynicism, a rare quality I would suggest in the art world. Optimism and beauty in everything and everyone is his byword in life and in his paintings.

He sees the world in colour. He even hears music in colour due to a rare condition called synaesthesia which probably explains both his attitude and his vision.

He wears odd socks to brighten up a dull day. He died his hair peroxide blonde decades ago after seeing a TV advert for Clairol saying ‘Blondes Have More Fun’ and declared it to be true. And he is totally without fear or compromise.

His paintings depicting two male lovers were executed (I think he would hate that word ) at a time when homosexuality was illegal. But then he is quoted as saying ‘I do believe that paintings can change the world.’

His view of art in general is a simple one: ‘The urge to draw must be quite deep within because children love to do it.’

He championed art on an iPad because he wanted to see paintings anew and as a work of art in itself because ‘new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling.’

And yet he sees the world not in technological terms but as a thing of beauty and inspiration because ‘if you see the world as beautiful, thrilling and mysterious.. then you feel quite alive.’

And what thrills me more, apart from his longevity, his talent and memories of the times I interviewed him, is that he is and remains one of us.

Anyone growing up in the BD2 area of Bradford – as I did – will have heard stories of Hockney starting out pushing his silver cross pram door to door selling his paintings so he could buy bigger and better canvases on which to keep experimenting and creating.

Many said they didn’t like them (some still do) but everyone wishes they had bought one.

Only this week I had a conversation about the fact he often drew paintings for a lovely lady’s grandad when he was a child living in Eccleshill which for years were kept in the attic but disposed off by accident by her grandma. What price would they fetch now?

Yet money never motivated him then or since. His first gallery portrait of his father (a well known peace protestor in Bradford ) sold for ten pounds.

Sixty years later his Two Figures in a Pool broke the record for the most expensive painting ever sold created by a living artist at £70 million. And that was in 2018.

David Hockney is himself a thing of beauty. He quite rightly deserves the title of the world’s greatest living artist.

A man who has remained true to himself and still rises every day to do the thing he loves most and that is paint, but for painting’s sake not to show off because he believes ‘we grow small trying to be great.’

And we are so lucky to have him near, if not always physically, in his work. We can browse it for free at the Salt’s Mill which he willing ‘decorated’ for his friend Jonathan Silver by sending him scores and scores of paintings to brighten the then crumbling space.

There is an exhibition for Bradford 2025 at the media museum on for a short time only.

We could all go to Paris, which for me would rather lovely seeing as though my dad the son of a Bradford wool trader was born there, left when he was a baby and lived a stone’s throw from Hockney’s neck of the woods all his life.

And why not? Paris it is then. What is life if not an adventure? Or in the words of the great man himself ‘If you are not playful you are not alive.’ Or to put it another way, the real art of living.