And if opening up goes disastrously wrong, Grayson Perry also taught us some great coping mechanisms: "A big thing I have learnt is that you can have some control over people's attitudes towards you.

Now I am ‘Grayson Perry’. But it’s nice, people are nice." Now, he says, there is an expectation for him to dress in a certain way. Cycling along recently in civvies, a road-mender emerged ...