Passed/Failed: An education in the life of Grayson Perry, Turner Prize-winning artist

'Guns and camping: I loved cadets'

Grayson Perry had settled on being an Army officer before becoming interested in art © Geraint Lewis

Grayson Perry, 47, is the transvestite potter who won the 2003 Turner Prize, picking up the award dressed as "Claire". He is curating the "Unpopular Culture" touring exhibition, which opens at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on 10 May. He is also a patron of "Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank", which, from 10-14 March, gives free entry to "Much Ado About Nothing" at Shakespeare's Globe, in London, to 10,000 young people.

The playground at Broomfield Primary, near Chelmsford, was lined with bomb shelters. You ventured in them at your peril. Boys used to stand on these concrete shelters and do backward somersaults on to the ground. Health and Safety was very different then! We also played a game called "The Whip" in which 12 boys hold hands and run round so fast that the boy at one end is swung into the air.

In class, I was always in the top group. There were three classes at Woodham Ferrers C of E Primary, where I went when my mother moved in with my stepfather. Although I was only eight, I was immediately put in the top class of this school of 60-odd pupils. I didn't really shine at art until I went to secondary school, but I did my first ever pottery class at Woodham Ferrers when I was nine. We had to wear rubber smocks and I remember being quite erotically excited. Towards the end of my time at primary school, I was definitely a burgeoning fetishist. I played the Angel Gabriel in my last year, getting a strong erotic charge from the white dress, wings and halo.

King Edward VI Grammar School was the most sought-after school in the county. I was a very diligent student at first. By the end of the second year, I won the form prize. By the end of the third year, I'd sunk almost to the bottom: puberty and a lot of trouble at home. My grandmother called in the NSPCC; this didn't help, as I was 14 and just wanted a quiet life. I was finding out that I was a transvestite.

I'd settled on being an Army officer. I took to the school cadet force like a duck to water: camping and guns. I got seven O-levels and retook two in the sixth form: people in my school got 12. My interest in the Army waned, and the art teacher said, "I think you'd do really well at art college". (That is, here's a boy who's weird enough...)

I did art, geography and English A-levels, but soon realised that the only qualifications I needed for art school were five O-levels – and I had those already. I got an A in art and scraped geography and failed English: I wasn't that interested in the set Shakespeare plays (which is ironic, considering my current attachment to the Globe!).

On my first day at Braintree College, I thought, "Now it's art full time". In the first term, we had a taster of all the disciplines, then we had to assemble our portfolios for entry into a degree course.

Portsmouth was not the most high-level art college, but we were 100 art students within a large polytechnic, and had a strong bond. We started when the fashion was New Romantic, and as we walked to college in frilly blouses, velvet trousers and high boots, we'd get shouted at by the locals. My craft technique was abysmal; I did a bit of ceramics but it was slapdash. I only excelled at ceramics when I went to evening classes, later on.

I got a 2:1 in fine arts. I worked quite hard, and some of the lecturers were excellent (I had an affair with one of them). I came out as a transvestite in the second year, and no one blinked; it was: "Grayson's a transvestite – fine."

The name Claire came about because I went to a transvestite group where you had to have a "fem" name. My girlfriend decided: "You're a Claire."