Museum trips used to bore me

Teachers marched school groups through endless Baroque paintings with little explanation. The soft bodies against pale blue skies felt repetitive and joyless, with no sense that art was meant to be fun.

Enter Coco, the time-traveling tart

Comedian Max Norman created Coco, a six foot seven character without heels, who leads interactive and mostly factual art tours through galleries in London and beyond. Coco is Norman's alter ego and self-described time-traveling tart.

A cheeky romp in Edinburgh

During the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last month, Coco performed at the National Galleries of Scotland. The tour was billed as a cheeky romp uncovering the gossip, glamour and glorious absurdity hiding behind the art.

“gossip, glamour and glorious absurdity hiding behind the art”

Curtseying and galloping through history

Coco had the audience curtsy before paintings of British kings and queens, then taught lessons about their indulgences and insecurities. The group played dead on the floor during a lesson about the fall of the Jacobites in eighteenth century Scotland.

Norman's revenge became justice

Norman created Coco as revenge on his artist mother, who used to drag him through art galleries across London. For anyone who spent childhood staring blankly at Old Masters, Coco feels less like revenge and more like justice.