Meet the artist who describes his own work as 'terrible', but has been getting commissions from around the world. Also: the strip performer entertaining the elderly, and the long-lost tomb of King Thutmose IIPresenter: Alan Smith. Music composed by Iona Hampson
Chapter 1: What is the main theme of this Happy Pod episode?
I'm Alan Smith and it's great to be with you for half an hour or so of uplifting stories from around the world.
In this edition... It's creating a lot of laughter for us as a family with me doing them, but also when people are receiving them, they're just so ridiculous that people are just really enjoying it for what it is.
We meet the artist who's creating what he says are terrible paintings, but that hasn't stopped him from getting commissions from all over the world. We'll find out why. Also... The most lines that I hear is, I feel young again, you've helped me relive my youth. The care home worker turns strip performer who's been entertaining some elderly fans.
The man who's using his experience as a child refugee to design robots to help vulnerable youngsters.
I stayed in my room and was coding like crazy and that inspired me to seek an education in computer science. Despite my parents' guidance, that was, you're going to become a doctor like most immigrants.
MUSIC
But to begin, we're all supposed to have hidden talents. I'm still trying to think what mine might be. But one man in the north-west of England has gone viral with his. Jamie Lee Mathias paints portraits in his spare time. He must be good at it too because he's had more than 100 commissions from people all over the world. But there's a catch.
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Chapter 2: Who is the artist behind the 'terrible' paintings?
You see, these paintings are what Jamie calls terrible. And some of his work has been mistaken for that of a child. It all started when Jamie painted a portrait of his wife on their wedding day, as the Happy Pod's Holly Gibbs has been finding out.
We've painted as a family for a number of years and my wife gave me quite a lot of grief about the quality of my work. So I decided to paint something of us on our wedding day, gave it to her as a gift and it went down very, very well. I think she was a little bit shocked that that's what I thought she looked like, to be honest.
Chapter 3: How did Jamie Lee Mathias become internationally recognized?
It was done just from an image that hadn't been taken yet because it was before the wedding day. She looked nothing like that on the day, but she saw the humour in it, as did all of the guests on the day as well.
What inspired you to draw the picture of you and your wife on your wedding day in the first place?
She was basically saying how bad I was, so I thought it would be quite funny to present it as part of the wedding speech, knowing that it would be bad, and it was, and it got a lot of laughs, and from then it just blew up. So it was more just that she said I was rubbish, so I thought I'd gift it to her. I actually said I'd like her to hang it on the living room wall.
She's, as of yet, refused to do that.
Was that your only gift to her, this painting?
It was, actually, actually.
So you put this painting online and then you get lots of requests from people for you to paint their pictures.
Yeah, basically at the turn of the year, we decided that we'd put it on social media and just see if anybody else wanted one. I enjoy doing it, even though I'm not very good. So I wanted to carry on. There's only so many I could do for friends and family. And it's just kind of blown up.
Yeah, we've got, I think, 145 orders at the moment going to about nine different countries, I think, at last count.
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Chapter 4: What is the unique aspect of Max Hunty's performances?
He's been speaking to The Happy Pod's Harry Bly.
Just because somebody is older doesn't automatically mean that they're... and sort of their intelligence should be questioned because it absolutely shouldn't.
That was why I jumped at the chance doing the care home the other week. Well, there we go. So how did this come about? How did you combine these two parts of your life, you know, working as an activities manager in a care home and actually becoming the activity? Yeah.
I have seen over the years from doing stage shows, ladies screaming at the guys on stage. The funny thing is, it's always the older ladies who end up having the best time because at the end of the night, they are always the ones that come over to me and the lads and say, that wasn't like what I expected and you've... One of the most lines that I hear is, I feel young again.
You've helped me relive my youth. And that is really special to us as performers. So when Dreamboys sort of mentioned the care home job, obviously with my background, then I wanted to be the person to deliver that performance.
And take me through this performance at the care home. How did it go, first of all?
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Chapter 5: How are performances bringing joy to care home residents?
When I walked out, I started interacting with them. The music was playing, but I start talking to them as well. Like, for example, I say, oh, Betty, I'm sure we've met before. And just little one-liners like that, you know, that's what it's all about.
It sounds lovely and it sounds like you've, in a way, because of your expertise, you've adapted it for them. You know what will make them smile and you haven't just copy and pasted a Dreamboys show. You've curated it, haven't you?
Yeah, 100%. I mean, me as a performer... I like to sort of change it up a little bit. I like to do things that people won't expect. And it's all about building that rapport with the audience.
Max, how does it make you feel doing this work, stripping for this audience and, you know, seeing those smiling faces and hearing that feedback? For me, it's priceless.
You have just said, you've just used the word, you've just used the word stripper. Now, personally, I don't class myself as a stripper. It's not like that at all. It's a performance. I'm a performer. To hear the feedback that the ladies loved it, I'm changing perceptions.
And what really got us, and I'm sure this got to you as well, is that time slot's normally called a gnat and a knitter, knitting and a gnat or something. This is so vastly different. Yeah.
Which I'd like to say, I am going to go to that knitter-natter. I am going to go to that. Yeah, because I've made friends that day.
Well, Max, this is what some of your new friends from the care home had to say about your performance, starting with the care home manager, Caroline.
I've never seen a reaction like it from an event that we pulled off. The laughter, the giggle, the tears. I mean, just they've loved every minute of it.
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Chapter 6: Who is Paolo Pajanian and how did he get into robotics?
So I'm walking in the center of the city and thinking about like, what do I do with this $500? And then I remembered two of the smartest kids in my high school class were what you would call computer nerds. They were constantly talking to each other about computers. So then I thought, I said, you know what? I'm just going to go buy a computer.
And I saw in the window, there was a computer that was slashed from $999 to $500. So I went in and bought that computer. I brought it home and that changed the trajectory of my life because that summer, I stayed in my room and was coding like crazy.
And that inspired me to seek an education in computer science, despite my parents' guidance that was, you're going to become a doctor like most immigrants do, right?
Doctor or lawyer, but I wanted to be a computer scientist. Paolo, when you speak about coding that summer, you kind of, you blushed a little bit. It's almost like you fell in love with coding. Oh, I did.
You did? It was obsessive. It was obsessive. It was almost like an addiction.
And that led you down a very particular path. And you were very, very good at it as well, weren't you?
Yeah, but it was a bit of a tough time for me. I was, I had fallen behind in my schooling by four years. And then this computer gave me the motivation, inspired me to want to get a degree in computer science. So I went from doing really poorly in like second year of high school to the last year of high school. I was like top of the, not my class, but my entire school.
That really is remarkable. You went to university, so you got a degree and then you went on to study and you got a PhD, didn't you?
So I specialize in computer vision and robotics. So the science of physics. processing or analyzing images or videos to understand what's going on in the world to aid a robot to make decisions and perform tasks in the environment.
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