Mark Gatiss is spreading the word about an overlooked artist on BBC4
Gage Skidmore
Hands up if you have heard of John Minton. The League of Gentlemen actor and Sherlock writer Mark Gatiss is a huge fan of the mid 20th-century artist, who was a leading light in London’s Soho in the 1950s. Minton, whom the Daily Mirror described as “gay, generous, successful, popular and a man without financial worries”, took his own life in 1957, aged 39. In a BBC4 documentary that is due to be shown this summer, Gatiss meets key figures including the actor Norman Bowler, who recalls posing for Minton. And a mystery is solved when Spencer Churchill, another former model and bodybuilder, reveals himself to be the subject of a drawing that Gatiss himself owns.