Russell and Robert chat to music legend & flamboyant superstar Sir Elton John CBE from lockdown at his home in Los Angeles. We discuss art collecting, a lifelong obsession that began by collecting dinky toys and vinyl records during childhood, buying Man Ray posters at Athena when he first started songwriting with Bernie Taupin, why he started his photography collection in the early 1990s, what it was like to be photographed by Irving Penn, why he just missed out on getting his portrait taken by Robert Mapplethorpe, his friendships with contemporary artists such as Nathaniel Mary Quinn and Catherine Opie, his admiration for David Hockney, and why he & John Lennon once refused to answer the door to Andy Warhol!!! We discuss his love of glass, a preference for all-things analogue, his love of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, staging the groundbreaking exhibition 'The Radical Eye' at Tate Modern (that included photographs from the 1920s to the 1950s) and his hopes to stage further exhibitions at the V&A (where a gallery was recently named after Elton and husband David Furnish). We also discover his lockdown passion for jigsaw puzzles, playing Snakes & Ladders with his kids, and joyful binge-watching TV shows such as Fleabag and Pose!

Follow @EltonJohn on Instagram, Elton's website is: https://www.eltonjohn.com

Please visit @EJAF for the Elton John AIDS Foundation and website: http://ejaf.org

For all images discussed in today’s episode visit @TalkArt and we are also on Twitter @TalkArtPodcast. Special thanks to Elton, David Furnish and the Rocket team for making this interview possible. Thanks for listening!!!

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