The trouble with having portraits in the flat is that people think I’m a nob

Sir Keir Starmer might not appreciate the beauty of a face peering down at you, but I’m partial to them

What do Margaret Thatcher, Sir Walter Raleigh and William Gladstone have in common? Time’s up; they’ve all recently been removed from the walls of No 10. In August, there was great consternation when it was revealed that Sir Keir had ordered a portrait of Thatcher to be taken down. Now, Gladstone, Raleigh and a rather beautiful painting of Elizabeth I have fallen off their hooks too. So he’s not just a filthy socialist but a Republican too. Is there no end to the prime minister’s depravity?
Except a good deal of unnecessary fuss has been made about this, I reckon. He hasn’t removed Thatcher entirely. She’s just been shunted to another room. The plans to remove Raleigh and Elizabeth I were, according to Downing Street, drawn up by the previous government. Sir Keir’s now in charge, whether you like it or not, and that means he can have whatever artwork he likes hanging over him as he sweats over the fifth stage of Marxism. The prime minister prefers landscapes to ‘“people staring down at him”, apparently. “When I was a lawyer, I used to have sort of pictures of judges. I don’t like it. I like landscapes.” 
Although he also told Laura Kuenssberg last month that, as a major Arsenal fan, he would tolerate Thierry Henry on the wall. It would be quite a good joke to tell visiting world leaders that Thierry was a visionary politician (“va va voom!”), although the French possibly wouldn’t fall for it.
I have some sympathy on the portrait front because I understand the impression that certain portraits can give. In my hallway, I have an 8ft portrait of my great-great-uncle in his First World War kit, painted when he was just 17. When my dad downsized a couple of years ago, I was the only child with ceiling height high enough to take him and did so delightedly. Great Uncle Bobby, as he is known, is almost absurdly large and startles everyone who comes to my door in Crystal Palace. “Blimey,” says the Deliveroo driver/plumber/chimney sweep/dog walker. “He’s a big unit.”
“Yes,” I mumble apologetically because I’m instantly self-conscious about having such a whopping piece of art in my hallway, a portrait which would perhaps be more fitting in a Northumbrian castle than a suburban maisonette. “He was my great-great uncle, died in the war,” I often add, to elicit sympathy because, in my head, that means they don’t go away thinking: “What a posh nob.” Or, maybe they do anyway, but not necessarily because of my art. I usually refrain from telling them that his brother, in another eight-foot frame, is hanging next door in my sitting room. Having inherited ancestors on the walls brings to mind that old Alan Clark slight towards Michael Heseltine, that he had to “buy his own furniture”. I wonder if that’s (partly) the issue that Starmer has with oil portraits; he doesn’t want to give off aristo vibes.
Still, wrong impression or not, I love mine. Both portraits arrived from Spain after a long journey a couple of years ago, shrouded in bubble wrap. They leaned against the hallway wall like that for some time until I found a trio of men burly enough to hang them. Bubble wrap removed, I discovered faded handwriting on the back of my great-great-uncle’s portrait which revealed that he’d been 6ft 7, and died when he was just 18 in France. Only a year after the painting was finished. I’m proud of them, actually, as I am the, ahem, nude photograph of me in my bathroom.
“I love the art in here,” said a Pimlico Plumber recently, when I was forced to call them out for a leaking shower. “Mmm, thanks,” I replied quickly, “do you think it’s a valve issue or something more serious?”
Unlike the Prime Minister, I love portraits. In August, while in Edinburgh for the Fringe, I took a spin around the Scottish National Gallery and discovered the Glasgow Boys, the group of Victorian artists who took against romantic portraits of stags leaping across the heather and, instead, painted more naturalistic scenes. My favourite was a portrait by Edward Arthur Walton of two small children sitting on the grass with grubby knees, fingers entwined with a daisy chain, a perfect dandelion poking up in front of the girl’s sturdy leather boots. I would have that in my house (although there isn’t much room, what with the giant ancestors). 
Nearby hung another portrait by a French painter who influenced the Glasgow boys, Jules Bastien-Lepage. This was of a young lad who looks like the Artful Dodger – defiant expression, a whip over his shoulders because he was a barge boy who would have used it to encourage the horses pulling the barges, and the horn on his back to alert the lockmasters of their approach. “Looks like he’d put a brick through your window,” Mum muttered, as we strolled past. True. But he would also perk up a wall no end. As a working-class chap, perhaps he might even please the Prime Minister. 
They don’t even have to be good portraits. In fact, it’s often jollier if they aren’t. Later in August, on holiday in France, while staying at a slightly dilapidated château, I spotted a portrait of a woman in a blue silk dress hanging over the stairs. At least I think it was a woman. She also had a moustache and a distinctly male countenance. It was marvellous. If it was hanging in my house, she (or he) would make me laugh every day. I like a chubby Hanoverian; I love a stern-faced Tudor with a high forehead and a wimple.
Sir Keir has replaced Raleigh and Elizabeth I with paintings by the late Portuguese artist, Dame Paula Rego, and I think they look pretty gloomy myself. They’re also, notably, not landscapes, which he claims to prefer, but feature biblical figures with their mouths turned down. Still, it’s his call. And if the one of Elizabeth I is going begging, I’m sure I could find a little spot somewhere in Crystal Palace. I’d probably play it down though and tell any gawping delivery men that she was my late grandmother.
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