Introducing Rakewell, Apollo’s wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories
That footballing giant, Peter Crouch, has admitted to some curious preferences when it comes to art and interior decoration. In the latest episode of That Peter Crouch Podcast, Crouch invites his co-hosts into his home in Surrey to talk footballers’ houses – including his own, a new-build with 8-foot doorways devised accommodate a man who has previously compared himself to a giraffe.
The setting is an opportunity for a guest appearance from Crouch’s wife, the model Abbey Clancy, whose take on her husband’s domestic predilections touches on his capricious taste for art. Crouch isn’t sold on carefully curated living rooms: ‘There’s nice couches that you spend a lot of money on,’ he says, ‘you have art in there, like a nice fireplace, and you look through the door and say “what a gorgeous room, let’s go and sit in the kitchen”.’ All the same, as Clancy reveals, he once presented her with an impulse buy he’d made of ‘[a] picture of three pears – and it was £1,000’. ‘He had the cheek to put it on the wall’, she says, ‘and put it up wonky.’ You’re on the right track, Crouchie – Cézanne was into pears!
One Christmas, says Clancy, she framed Crouch’s football shirts from all the clubs he has played for (and that’s a lot of clubs). But his footballing memorabilia extends to sculpture, too: Crouch admits that he has busts of himself and David Beckham that featured on James Corden’s World Cup Live in 2010. Clancy: ‘You stole the David Beckham one.’
Indeed, it’s safe to say that Clancy is responsible for policing good taste in the Crouch household. If her Instagram account is anything to go buy, that ‘nice fireplace’ is crested with an Empire-style mantel clock with complementary candelabras. In contrast, Crouch once nearly bought a ‘big twirly slide’ in chrome that would have been installed indoors – until a quote came through for £50,000. There’s hope for Carsten Höller yet…
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