Bear Grylls would have no trouble surviving on a remote Pacific Island with nothing more than a snakeskin in which to collect his own urine, but according to Grayson Perry he wouldn’t be much use on the mean streets of Finsbury Park.

The Turner prize-winning artist has turned his sights on the survivalist and his exceptionally rugged version of masculinity, arguing that it isn’t fit for the 21st century.



“He celebrates a masculinity that is useless,” Perry said. “Try going into an estate agent in Finsbury Park and come out with an affordable flat. I want to see Bear Grylls looking for a decent state school for his child!”

Perry said that the masculine ideal presented by shows such as The Island, in which Grylls is currently putting a third group of hapless contestants through survivalist hell, is making it harder for men to successfully negotiate modern life.

“Men might be good at taking the risk of stabbing someone or driving a car very fast, but when it comes to opening up, men are useless,” Perry told the Radio Times in an interview to promote his new series, All Man. “Masculinity is a decorative feature that is essentially counter-productive.”

Perry’s three-part series on Channel 4 takes in cage fighters, police and the young men they arrest in Lancashire, as well as the traders and hedge fund managers of the City of London. The central premise is that men have been mis-sold an ideal of masculinity that is a “hangover” from a more violent age.

He said that the situation is especially tough for the less well off, with continued reverence for “working with your hands” not reflected in the jobs available.

However, he added that pressure on men to adopt overtly masculine traits is compounded by human sexuality, which also reinforces stereotypes about women.“Who has sex fantasies about gender equality?” he said. “Our sexuality is formed in the past – we are invested in sexual differences.”

Perry is known for both his art, in particular his work in ceramics which won him the 2003 Turner prize, and appearing in extravagant women’s clothing.

He has explored the concept of masculinity in a variety of formats before. In 2014 he guest-edited an issue of the New Statesman, called The Rise and Fall of Default Man, and also spoke on the subject at the Being a Man festival at the Southbank.

The Channel 4 series, which will air next month, is his third three-parter for the broadcaster, following 2012’s All in the Best Possible Taste, which looked at different concepts of taste across social classes, and the 2015 Bafta-winning Who are You?, in which he painted the portraits of people facing a “moment in their lives when they need to define who they are”, including former Loyalists in Northern Ireland, deaf parents, and former cabinet minister Chris Huhne.



Earlier this year he also made a one-off, Grayson Perry’s Dream House, in which he built a whole home to his own artistic specifications.