"I just love paint and what it can achieve," says Christian, who did his foundation course at Wirral Metropolitan College, prior to a degree in Leicester and fame and not a little fortune (circa £18,000 a portrait) in London, where he lives with wife Emma, a reflexologist, and daughters Colette, Daphne and Anika. Christian's post-royal subjects have run the social gamut from Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, head of the Roman Catholic church in England and Wales, and tennis ace Tim Henman to Dirty Den and Jade from Big Brother. He has exhibited alongside Sir Peter Blake and Ralph Steadman and become the artist in residence to TV's Richard and Judy. But his own celebrity started with a phone call to his then flat above a takeaway and a drive in his old red VW Beetle to Buckingham Palace to paint the queen on behalf of the Royal Overseas League. "She asked me about what painters I liked and I said Gainsborough and Reynolds. To which she replied: ' I think we've got a few of those.' "She has only sat for about 100 paintings ever. The process involves spending time. You get another aspect of people's personality when they are at rest and chatting. "I asked her about the famous 1955 Pietro Annigoni portrait of her wearing a cloak. It has appeared everywhere. "I said she looked a little haughty in that, and she revealed it was because she was straining to look out of a window in front of a high wall with a garden beyond." Somewhat sexier was his commission to paint a nude of Australian supermodel Petta Longstaffe: "The request came from her millionaire boyfriend who ran a paparazzi agency. Terrible work, but someone's got to do it." But today's task - quite literally - is judging the national Drench Art competition for 16-30 year olds. "I love things like this. You get artists coming from nowhere. People surprise you all the time, and it's great to meet them as well. "My great grandfather always carried a sketch pad and my grandmother painted in oils. That must be where I get it from, although I believe everyone has a potential for art." * The Lost Art, by Christian Furr, published by John Blake at £12.99. | 
