‘Right-wingers are more friendly,’ says cross-dressing artist Grayson Perry

He’s the cross-dressing artist who’s the darling of the fashionable Left – but still Grayson Perry confesses that he finds Right-wing people ‘friendlier’.

Speaking ahead of his new series in which he explores both sides of the political and cultural divide in America, Mr Perry said: ‘The Left is more venal and has more antipathy to the opposition than the other way round. 

‘I would say the Right on average are friendlier and more open.’

Grayson Perry, 60, explores both sides of the political and cultural divide in a new series, Big American Road Trip. He confesses that, on average, people on the Right are ‘friendlier and more open’

During filming for the show he said he confronted a group of wealthy liberals he met at a dinner party in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

He recalled asking whether they feared their lifestyle had fuelled the resentment which led to the election of Donald Trump as President, adding that this suggestion made them angry. 

Mr Perry, 60, told Radio Times: ‘I really laid into them. I was well p*****, so I didn’t quite have my full faculties, and they got hostile, but it all settled down.’

Speaking of the shame many white middle class people on the Left feel, he said: ‘It’s all part of the tribal culture to be guilty – we do guilty in the same way that the Japanese do shame.’

While making the programme, which will be broadcast on Channel 4, he also filmed a group of ‘bikers for Trump’.  

Any concerns he had about their potential for hostility rapidly evaporated upon meeting them. 

He said: ‘Some of them were a bit disappointed I didn’t turn up in a dress.’ 

During filming he met a group of ‘bikers for Trump’. ‘Some of them were a bit disappointed I didn’t turn up in a dress,’ he said. Pictured: Bikers for Trump gather for a rally in North Carolina in August

Mr Perry said he enjoyed making the show in the US because of the frank-talking attitudes he encountered.

He added: ‘America is a great place to make a documentary because people will give you their life story at the drop of a hat because I was an outsider.’

Mr Perry has become an iconic figure in the art world, celebrated for his ceramic vases and tapestries. He won the Turner Prize in 2003.

He has become well known to the wider public as an occasional transvestite who good-humouredly expresses his outspoken views in his television programmes.

Grayson Perry’s Big American Road Trip begins on Channel 4 next Wednesday.