Transvestite potter ponders honours dress dilemma

Transvestite potter Grayson Perry is already thinking about what frock to wear when he goes to the palace to pick up his CBE.

The artist, who regularly appears as his female alter-ego Claire, famously wore a Little Bo Peep outfit when he won the Turner Prize for his ceramics in 2003.

The 53-year-old, who grew up in Chelmsford, admitted he had not expected the honour, saying: "I suppose I'm surprised that the tentacles of the establishment reach into my particular pond of culture."

He said he had "weighed up the coolness factor" of accepting the award, but said it would help give him "a platform" and was nice for "the older generation of people in my family".

Asked what he will wear to his investiture, Perry said: "I'm planning it already. Certainly I'll be putting together a nice outfit, I think it would feel a bit funny if I wasn't."

The artist even said his teddy bear, Alan Measles, who has featured in several of his radio and television programmes "might get a look in" at the ceremony.

Perry lives in London and Sussex with his wife, the author and psychotherapist, Philippa Perry and their daughter Flo, born in 1992.