Jenny Eclair: I’ve sat on both sides of the easel
As new Channel 4 art show Drawers Off prepares to air, we speak with presenter Jenny Eclair to uncover more about the creative series.
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Lockdown has led to swathes of the population trying their hand at a range of creative hobbies for the very first time. Arts and crafts being no exception. It is precisely the premise upon which Channel 4’s new show Drawers Off is based, with contestants swapping clothes for brushes as they battle it out to win the £1,000 prize.
Complete with a suitably tongue-in-cheek title, the series is presented by comedian and Grumpy Old Women star Jenny Eclair and might just make you view the term ‘paint stripper’ in an entirely different light.
“It’s a life drawing show,” says Eclair 60. “The twist to the tail of the show is that each of the artists take it in turn to be the life model. They all come along knowing that at some point during the week, they will be stripping off and sitting on a podium. There’s a lot of draping; there’s nobody that is standing or sitting exposing anything. It’s an afternoon show on Channel 4, you know, there are rules and regulations.”
“If they’re wise, they’ll be sitting; if they’re daft, they’ll be standing, because it’s an hour long pose,” Eclair continues. “Some of them start, you know, ‘Oh, I can do this, this doesn’t hurt,’ and then after an hour they’re twitching and the next day they can barely walk. So, I always think, well, if it was me, I’d be lying down – get me a chaise longue and I’m on that.”
Each episode sees the life model pick their favourite portrait, with the prevailing creation going through to the winners gallery. Guided along the way by artist Diane Ali, the improvements in the contestants’ final pieces is visible from one episode to the next, with the amateur artists showcasing creativity untrammelled by formal teaching.
“I’m ably assisted by my beautiful assistant Diane Ali, who brings some class and respectability and some knowledge to the show, because she’s a bona fide artist and curator and mentor,” says Eclair. “She’s the one that will occasionally lean over a shoulder and go, ‘Remember the feet, remember feet,’ or, ‘Hands are bigger than that,’ or, ‘Check your measurements, make sure that there’s still some room left on the paper for the head’.”
It’s also a show that proves to be something of an emotional rollercoaster. “There was one very touching moment when one of our male models burst into tears,” recalls Eclair. “Somebody had captured on paper something that he’d never seen of himself put on paper before, that he kind of recognised. It was very emotional.”
As it turns out, Drawers Off is not the first time the comedian, and avid painter, has stripped off in the name of art. “I’ve sort of sat on both sides of the easel,” says Eclair. “I’ve been a life model when I was a drama student aged 19 or 20 in Manchester and then when I came to Camberwell in ‘82 and it sort of coincided with my very, very early stand-up days, when I was actually a punk poet.
“I was performing poetry at night, in rooms above pubs, and in the afternoons and daytimes, I’d sometimes do a little bit of life modelling.”
The new series, Drawers Off, will air on Channel 4 from March 1.