Sport Relief came up with the intriguing concept of ‘Sport Portraits’ (BBC1, Monday and Tuesday), with five celebrated artists (and ex-cricketer Jack Russell) painting portraits of four sporting icons for a charity auction. The pop artist Sir Peter Blake, Jack Vettriano, Stella Vine, cartoonist Gerald Scarfe and photographer Rankin depicted the royal three-day eventer Zara Phillips, boxing funnyman Ricky Hatton and football’s Fabio Capello and Didier Drogba.

It presented new problems for the artists: not just rendering dynamic sportsmen in still life but also facing consequences ranging from a sound beating to being charged with treason. .

Art and football are strange bedfellows. About the only thing they have in common is the ludicrous money involved in both. The England goalkeeper David James is a keen painter, but the true artistry of the “working man’s ballet” is to be found on the pitch, not on the wall, while other sports have been touched by art. Footballers at least will be familiar with the pictures of equestrian exploits and old golfers that adorn pubs across the land. .

Stella Vine was identified as “the footballers’ choice”, presumably because she had painted Jose Mourinho with his dog rather than the fact that she used to be a stripper. Capello’s people actually contacted the BBC to ask if Vine would paint him. “I’m a great art lover and collector myself,” said the England coach, an admirer of Vine’s work. You can’t really imagine such homage coming from Big Sam – or even Big Ron, collector of fine jewels. .

Zara chose Vettriano, and the man whom Raymond Blanc called “extremely romantic” became a little too excited at the prospect. When the gravel-voiced Scot rang her, it was like a dirty phone call. “I like the fact that you do what you do because I find it very sexy,” he said, thinking of jodhpurs and boots. “Can’t you just do me looking normal?” she pleaded. .

Fortunately, Phillips loved her picture, while Hatton was already a fan of Blake because of his ‘Sgt Pepper’ album cover and another one he did for Ricky’s fellow Mancunians Oasis. Here is an interesting meeting of minds, since Blake tends to be a fan of his subjects and has painted several boxers, including Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston. Those who like Blake’s art tend to like his subject matter as well as the work itself. .

Then there’s Jack Russell, the odd one out in more ways than one. Like James, he found time during his sporting career to pursue an interest in art. But he only appeared for five seconds. The former England wicketkeeper, who specialises in pictures of battlegrounds and cricket grounds, is a reclusive and eccentric character who insists on blindfolding people who visit his house. Perhaps he was so disappointed by his picture of Drogba that he wanted to blindfold everyone who looked at it. .

Self-taught Scottish painter Jack Vettriano has a style that’s immediately recognisable. One of his paintings, The Singing Butler, sells more posters and cards than any other image.

Radio Time’s Geoff Ellis asked him about his painting of Zara Phillips, one of half-a-dozen featured in a two-part BBC1 documentary Sport Portraits.

Geoff Ellis

How did you get involved in Sport Portraits?

When I was approached, my gut reaction was to say no, because painting portraits is not something I generally do. But I said to my agent the only person I’d want to paint is Zara Phillips. I like to paint attractive women, I don’t like painting men, especially sportsmen. Painting someone like David Beckham would just make me feel inadequate.

So how did it go when you met Zara?

I went to meet her in Gloucestershire and we had some difficulties. I work from photographs almost exclusively in my own studio and working somewhere else where you don’t know the light… well, the first set of paintings were a disaster. We had to get her to come to London to photograph her in my studio. She refused to wear her riding gear, which had been the initial idea. She was right; it was too obvious. She decided she wouldn’t even wear a dress or a skirt – I do like to paint legs – but she did agree to wear very sexy high heels.

What was the plan?

My idea was that she should be standing, holding the flag behind her. It made sense if you’re going to call the painting The Olympian to have the Union Jack which represents Great Britain at the Olympics and is also her granny’s flag! In the studio, we did some shots of her standing up and then I said sit down and we’ll drape the flag over the chair. And as soon as I looked through the camera lens I knew that was what I was going to paint.

Do you normally work from photographs?

Yes. I don’t know many artists who do work from life. It’s so time consuming. I could afford to have a model here all day long but most artists couldn’t.

Has Zara seen the portrait?

Just last week we drove to Zara’s father’s place, Captain Mark Phillips, and let her see the portrait. I think she’s quite chuffed.

And you?

I’m very pleased with it. What pleases me, too, is that it still looks like a Jack Vettriano painting, even though it’s a portrait commission. I’ve put my stamp on it, you know? I often get asked to paint portraits, usually by wealthy men who want their wives painted, but I always say no. I’m not a portrait painter. It’s not what I want to do. But this is very special for two reasons. First, it’s Zara Phillips whom I admire greatly and is extremely charming. Two, it was for charity. And all the time this was going on, I had a film crew standing behind me, which upped the ante slightly.

Did that bother you?

I’ve done a wee bit of TV before. Obviously, you’d rather nobody was there. So you say to yourself, “It’s all for a good cause”. And the film crew were great. Can you put that in? I really did give them a hard time of it.

Did you lose your rag with them?

No, no, no. But when I was getting filmed, I would criticise the crew, on camera. For instance, I’d say to them: “I’ll tell you why it didn’t work the first time when we went to Gloucestershire, I had a film crew who wouldn’t shut up and who kept telling me what to say to Zara and when to say it.” I was saying this kind of tongue-in-cheek only because they were recording it. I thought, tape this, tape that. I got on great with them by then end.

Did you feel pressured during the project?

That’s the nature of commissions – they’re nervy because you have someone else to please. I generally paint for myself and you have the choice. You either buy it or you don’t and frankly I don’t much care so long as someone buys it. I’ve only ever done one commission before, for Terence Conran, for his Bluebird Club. You have to please the sitter.

The plan is to sell the portrait at auction in aid of Sport Relief. What’s the record price for your work?

Three-quarters of a million. The TV production company has insured the painting for a £100,000. It would be great if it made that.

Are you a sports fan?

Yes, but only from my armchair. I’m very fortunate because I’ve met Sir Alex Ferguson; he has a few of my paintings. He’s not nearly as grumpy as people think – he’s quite good fun. I’ve always been a Manchester United fan and I think that goes back to the time when United had a few Scottish players in the squad – along with Liverpool. Liverpool and Man U are the teams I want to do well. Although I live in London now, I never will be a fan of Arsenal or Chelsea.

Does art make a difference?

As an artist, one would like to think it does. I’ve been astonished over the years by the letters I have received from people who have been affected by my work. I know my critics will howl with derision at the thought it may have made a difference in some way.

Should politics and art mix?

If artists have it in them, I think it is right that they should articulate their views in their work. I’ve been told that my work inspires people to debate sexual politics. I don’t try to make statements – I’m just interested in the shifting balance of power in relationships.

Is your work for the many or for the few?

I’m pleased to say that my work is accessible to the many. It is tiresome that being popular is equated with having little artistic merit. My work is not widely known because it appeals to some low common denominator. Reproduction has introduced it to a vast audience.

If you were world leader, what would be your first law?

Great tax breaks for artists.

Who would be your top advisers?

Leonard Cohen, because he is the most honest man I can think of. Billy Connolly, because he makes me laugh more than anyone. His observations are so sharp, you’d know you were getting sound advice.

What, if anything, would you censor?

Trainers, except for athletes. There is much about modern-day dress that I can’t abide – the androgyny particularly. But trainers would be the first to go.

If you had to banish one public figure, who would it be?

Simon Cowell.

What are the rules that you live by?

I have no rule book. I’m trying to get by without causing any problems to those I care for. I forget who it was that once said, “Good men must not obey the laws too well,” but the words have stayed with me.

Do you love your country?

I love Scotland’s landscape, but some of the people in that landscape have made it intolerable to me.

Are we all doomed?

We will become extinct eventually, but hopefully not in my lifetime.

Because I’m Worth It – interview by Melanie Reid, The Times, 27 August 2007

Jack Vettriano has no truck with artists who resent his success. He just knows how to sell his work

With the ease of a man for whom such things are now second nature, Jack Vettriano lets it be known that he’s playing hard to get. He is considering offers from “several” London art dealers, but he’s not saying which ones: only that he will choose from his suitors early in 2008.

This is an artist, we must remember, whose work now sells routinely for six figures; and whose huge fame is testimony to the value of astute marketing. Self-taught and sneered at by the art establishment, especially in his native Scotland, Vettriano has become arguably one of the best known painters in the world through the sale of reproductions of The Singing Butler – which sold for a record £744,000 in 2004.

Today, Sotheby’s will auction off Vettriano’s “Bluebird Collection” (paintings which hung in the Conran restaurant), predicted to fetch more than £1.2 million.

A gentle, essentially pragmatic man, he is irritated by those who carp at his success. “Artists say, how can I get only X for my work and Vettriano gets X thousand for his? Think, you stupid bugger. It’s not a bit about being a better painter than me, it’s about market forces.

“The art world is about personalities; it all depends which dealer you are with. Larry Gagosian is the most famous just now: he can take someone off the street and make them famous because everyone has faith in his judgment. A good dealer can place your paintings. Mine have very often gone straight from my easel into someone’s home, because the gallery has made a phone call. There’s a parallel with being a clothes designer: it’s not so much about your work, it’s about who’s selling it, and where.”

Last month Vettriano’s partnership with his last gallery, the Portland, run by Tom Hewlett, ended mysteriously amid unconfirmed rumours that Vettriano had failed to produce pictures for a promised exhibition. It was an exceedingly fruitful relationship while it lasted, however, and Vettriano talks of it almost in terms of a marriage. .

“We had 15 great years together,” he says. “While I think that we both took a huge amount out of it in terms of putting each other on the map, we both felt it was time for a change and I’m afraid that’s all I’m going to say. I have been approached by several galleries but I’m not going to rush into any decisions because there’s no need to. I’lll think about it for the rest of this year, then make a decision early next year.” (Gagosian is not one of the dealers he is considering.) .

Vettriano gives the impression of a man with a powerful sense of how fortunate he has been in his extraordinary rags-to-riches art career. The son of a Fife miner, he left school at 16 and prepared to become a mining engineer; when he was 21 someone gave him a set of watercolours for his birthday. If there is ego there, it is a very modest ego.

“Everything has worked out fabulously well. I get all the more pleasure because I never thought it was going to happen,” he says simply.

A book will be published next February called The Artist and the Studio, a photo-documentary of him at work. About 80 per cent photos and 20 per cent paintings, it will have a foreword by Ian Rankin, the crime writer, a fellow Fifer who favours the same noir interiors. “It’s shot in my studios in Kirkcaldy, London and the South of France. There are unposed pictures of me painting,” Vettriano says. .

It will be as far as he has ever gone to reveal his private life, for some time the preoccupation of the tabloid newspapers. At 55, he says he is single, but does not, you sense, ever remain so for very long. Ask his friends and they laugh. “Jack just loves women,” they say. He flits between his three homes and confesses to feeling quite nomadic. “I will probably stay in France until Christmas. It’s so cheap and accessible to fly now. What’s lovely in the summer is that Globespan do a flight between Nice and Edinburgh for 60 euros. I’m a materialist but only with my eye on investment. I didn’t start to make money until I was in my late forties and I fully understand the value of it; and I’ve seen what new money does to people, how it makes them buy gold chains and Rolexes. .

“I don’t want to go out and be looked at. I refuse to go to lots of things I’m invited to. I don’t want to appear all over the place. In a way it lessens your art. I’m just uncomfortable with it and I’d rather stay in with a book.” .

He was appointed OBE in 2003. But he has also, he revealed, achieved that other very British high-watermark: one of his early paintings appeared recently on Antiques Roadshow. It was signed Jack Hoggan, the name he was born with. “I started painting at 21, in 1973, and it wasn’t until 1989 that I decided to see if I could make a living and changed my name.” .

During that period, he painted dozens of Hoggans, as he calls them, taking four or five at a time down to local charity fundraising exhibitions to sell for £50 each. .

The expert on Antiques Roadshow said that the painting was now worth £20,000. “I disagree with that; they were just copies. I was just teaching myself to paint,” Vettriano says. “I trained myself to paint by copying other artists. That was how I learnt, by copying. I put all these different styles in a pot and there was a certain alchemy that took place and it created my individual style. Something unique came out, and I’m very grateful for that.” .

Changing his name, he says, was a wonderful marketing ploy. He adopted his mother’s maiden name, Vettriano, which came from his Italian grandfather. “I’m a quarter Italian . . . ” he pauses, grinning, his hands framing his body from mid-thigh to waist ” . . . this bit.” .

In both his art and in his conversation, Jack Vettriano returns to sex: not sleazily, but in a rather matter-of-fact way. This is after all the raw material, the commodity, that fuels his art. He describes the sight of the men and women near his home on the Riviera, as “a visual feast”. “Wherever you look, it’s a pleasure. The women are amazing.” .

The men are probably amazing too, I venture. “I don’t look at men,” he says. Why should he? He’s the alpha male; it’s his louche fantasy. He admits that it’s usually himself he puts into his pictures. “I love the narrative of men and women. I do find it endlessly fascinating how we behave in matters of the heart, all that lying and deceit. I have never tried to deny that sex is a major interest to me and I think the difference between me and other men is that I admit it. People say to me, are you not ready to move on, but, hand on heart, all I ever wanted to do was paint people in situations I have been in. I wouldn’t deny that the work is fairly autobiographical.” .

Unsurprisingly, given the dark, erotic forces in his work, if you ask him his favourite movies he lists Blue Velvet, The Cook, the Thief, his Wife & her Lover and Perfume. .

Vettriano quietly gives a lot for charity and, endearingly, retains faith in human beings, as witnessed by his recent investment in a film company, Bright Shadow Films, set up in China by Charlie Moretti, a young St Andrews University graduate. One wonders how such a mentor would have changed his life at the same age. He dismisses it. “If someone had given me a helping hand, I’d be a chef by now,” he says bluntly. “If I had gone to art school I would have had all my figurative leanings knocked out of me by lecturers who didn’t like figurative art.” .

Without that academic status, though, his rejection by art circles persists. His income of £500,000 a year from reproductions alone also causes jealousy. “Other artists thought I had sold out when I first agreed to sell posters, and that was for about £2,000 a year. Ask them now whether they’d like to be in my position and I wonder what they’d say. I am in a position to give a huge number of people a huge amount of pleasur
e, and some artists are filling their garrets with their work which no one will ever see. .

“It’s a human thing to resent people that have got there faster than you. Leonard Cohen said there’s a curious side to us that, when in the company of someone whose star is shining too brightly, we try to extinguish it. That’s what happened to me in Scotland. People have been so disparaging.” .

He is angered by the attitude of the Scottish establishment.”I’m the best known Scottish artist ever. I don’t say that because I’m the best painter, but because I’m the best known. The Royal Scottish Academy should be about recognising people that make an impact.” .

Things may yet change. The “people’s artist” is now being courted by the Nationalist government in Scotland, and this edgy, intriguing man may yet come to get the honour he craves in his own land. Like or loathe his work, it seems only just.