CROSS dressing artist Grayson Perry’s documentary about modern masculinity, which saw him attend last year’s Durham Miners’ Gala, is to be screened on television this week.

The Turner Prize winning transvestite joined the men of Trimdon Grange with a film crew for The Big Meeting last July to explore how working-class culture has shaped the pit community ‘hard man’ image.

In the first of three episodes, Perry also looks at Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), in the North-East and meets 33-year-old Washington fighter Colin ‘Freakshow’ Fletcher, who dresses a clown for bouts, and trains at Unity Gym in Durham.

As a self-described “life-long sissy”, Perry has a problem with machismo, but as he spends time with the fighters, many of his expectations about hyper-macho men are overturned.

The double BAFTA award-winning TV presenter, who wears frocks and has an alter ego, Claire, said: “These are old school men who grew up in heavy industries, but these heavy industries don’t exist anymore.

“The cage fighters’ way of dealing with masculinity is a hangover of that type of masculinity, a very stoic working class pride.

“One of the problems I have found with working class masculinity is it is constantly nostalgic and is constantly looking back at a time when men were men.”

Perry also examines the struggles many men experience in trying to live up to masculine ideals as the region has a high rate of male suicide.

He said: “Boys are brought up to be emotionally simple, but they are not. “They are just as complex as women are. Therefore, they do not have an easy vocabulary to talk about their feelings. That is the big problem.”

In each episode, Perry spends time in a different ultra-male world to see what their extreme maleness has to tell us about the changing lives and expectations of all men in Britain today.

Perry said: “It is about finding a masculinity that works, here and now, for you.

“Some people are almost victims of it. It is not working for them.

“There is an idea of masculinity, which they carry around in their head, which they are trying to match up to and that is making them unhappy.

“I have had to look at myself a lot and I have got to admit I am quite masculine in many ways. I am quite alpha. I am quite competitive, particularly if you put me on a push bike.”

Grayson Perry: All Man begins at 10pm on Thursday, May 5, on Channel 4.