Gradually, without my really noticing, one of my oldest and closest friends has become the best-known portrait artist in Britain. Certainly the best known by me. But then, since Bacon and Freud died, I don’t know any others. And if you, too, only know one, then it is probably Jonathan Yeo.
Jonny would be the first to admit that the reason you know him and no others is because of the people who have sat for him: Tony Blair, David Cameron, Sienna Miller (nude), Rupert Murdoch (clothes on, thank God), Jude Law, Helena Bonham Carter, Grayson Perry, Nicole Kidman, David Walliams, Erin O’Connor, Damien Hirst, Dennis Hopper, Stephen Fry, Michael Parkinson, Kevin Spacey… But there is no shame in that. Jonny is primarily a portrait