jeremy deller, welcome to this cultural life. thank you. you were brought up in dulwich in south london. what are your earliest cultural memories of home? home. well, church, actually. there s culture in church. yeah. there s a human culture, there s people, and then there s music and there s visuals and smells and so on. so, the church, maybe early on as a child, is something i remember. i remember seeing help, the beatles film, very early on. i remember telling my mother i d just discovered these four men who live in the same house as each other, which was very much like the house we lived in. and i was amazed. then she told me, oh, actually, i know those people. that s the beatles and they re not around any more. that was your introduction to the beatles? yeah, and i was very sad. i remember being very sad about it, thinking that they didn t live together properly and it was actually. they weren t around. so help was a big influence on me, and television in general, i t
that finished at the age of ii. but i loved paintings and i loved being around art, so that was something that was very special to me. on this cultural life, i ask my guests to choose those influences and experiences that have inspired their own creativity. and you ve chosen film club at school, and in particular seeing ken russell s film version of tommy, the rock opera by the who. why have you chosen this? well, i don t think i ve ever recovered from watching tommy, frankly. i m still blown away by it, even that experience. i remember it very clearly. because, at school, the school was a very academic, sports focused school, and there wasn t much fun to be had, to be honest. and one of the teachers there was clearly a very subversive character, and hejust had a film club and he just showed the most outrageous films. so he was clearly trying to bend the minds of these young boys, basically, and do that in a good way. and one of the films