The artist discusses statue rage, tennis tips from Andy Murray – and teeth
A little way into lunch, Maggi Hambling asks me, fatefully, how brittle the little rectangle of pork crackling that comes with our main course is. Before I have had time properly to answer she has bitten into it and almost immediately is fishing something out of her mouth. She studies a pair of lower front teeth on her palm. “Oh Christ! My ‘Maryland bridge’ – of which I was inordinately proud…”
Hambling responds to this small calamity in the way I imagine she has responded to much larger calamities in the past: she takes a slurp of wine, instinctively reaches for her cigarette packet, and laughs wheezily and long. She tucks her Maryland bridge haphazardly into a pocket. “At least,” she says, “you have your opening line: ‘We enjoyed a very pleasant luncheon during which half of my guest’s fucking teeth fell out…’”
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