Christopher Sykes’s diary: David Hockney, Bridlington lobster, and the risks of a third martini

I began my week with a trip to Bridlington, the closest seaside town to my childhood home. ‘Brid’, as it’s known to the locals, has a special British charm, comprising miles of unspoilt beach, beach huts, a pretty little harbour, fish-and-chip shops galore, rows of guest houses and The Expanse, a splendid old-fashioned hotel. The council are, however, missing a trick. Brid’s main fishing industry these days is lobsters, as delicious as any you will ever taste. You wouldn’t know it, however, as, apart from a few expensive ones kept in tanks at the Blue Lobster on the harbour, they all go to Europe. So, come on Brid, how about an annual Lobster Festival?

I was in Bridlington to talk to Margaret Hockney, David’s sister. A small lively woman who, like her brother, is profoundly deaf, she is also an artist, specialising in computer-generated designs, and it was she who introduced David to the Brushes App on the iPhone, with which he has since made so many memorable drawings. Hockney’s studio is amazing, a vast industrial warehouse with a floorspace of thousands of square feet, the walls hung with his huge colourful canvases, and screens dotted about covered with dozens of beautiful charcoal drawings. Because the space is so big, Hockney has bought half a dozen wheelchairs, and it’s an eccentric sight watching him and his various assistants whizzing around the floor in them, often travelling backwards.

If David Hockney is Bridlington’s most famous living son, then the contender for ‘most famous deceased son’ has to be William Kent, architect of the interiors of Houghton Hall, Norfolk, where I travelled to next to see the exhibition of pictures there on loan from the Hermitage. These were collected by Britain’s first prime minister, Robert Walpole, who had amassed a great fortune.