Where is former Art Attack presenter Neil Buchanan now?
In a wide-ranging interview we chatted to Buchanan about forming a Tenby-based heavy metal duo with ‘The Head’, their controversial split, sordid behind the scenes Art Attack stories and his bitterness at being overlooked for the reboot of the show
Interview by Children’s Art correspondent Tate Mo Dern
“After ITV cancelled the show in 2007 I was, unlike many of my Art Attack creations over the years, totally directionless.
“I would simply sit there wearing one of my old red jerseys, sweaters or turtlenecks pondering whether anyone still treasures the many papier-mache animals I guided them through so many years before.”
A solemn atmosphere hangs over the room as Buchanan says this in the lounge of his two-bedroom seaside property in Tenby. Those same red tops — now carefully pressed and framed — cover a wall adjacent to sliding glass doors looking out to the Welsh coast.
Although far from the glitz, glamour and hedonism of the days when Art Attack was at its peak, Buchanan has embraced life in the small community, even training as a volunteer RNLI coastguard.
“Tenby is so much more to me than the place I live. It is the place that gave me a second chance and allowed me to rediscover my love for heavy metal,” he says.
Buchanan was previously a guitarist in the heavy metal band Marseille (this is actually true) who enjoyed reasonable success in the 1970s and reformed for a while at the end of the 2000s.
He got back into the music biz in 2013 when he formed ‘NB and The Head’ with ‘The Head’, a talking bust and sidekick to Buchanan on the show (that’s obviously not true).
“Just like me, ‘The Head’ really struggled to adjust to normal life after coming down from what was essentially two decades of constant drug abuse to fuel the creations we were coming up with for CITV,” reflects Buchanan.
Although not known to the wider public, in showbiz circles it was well known that the Art Attack team would abuse a buffet of drugs in a very similar vein to how The Beatles would take combinations of hallucinogens to fuel their creative process.
Although seemingly innocent to most viewers, the bizarre set filled with oversized brushes, crayons, paint and other artistic implements can only have come from a drug-addled mind.
Clashes with other CITV shows were also common and Buchanan once even charged onto the set of a live filming of Jungle Run to kidnap one of the chimps who threw bananas at the competitors.
One particular story that has cult status among those who need to know in children’s TV came during the conception and execution of one of Buchanan’s Big Art Attacks. This is when Buchanan would create a large piece that is only appreciable from an overhead camera using smaller items related to the overall image.
“Usually it would take me and the team a couple of days to come up with and carry out a big Art Attack,” says Buchanan. “One time though I’d gobbled so many shrooms that I could just envision the piece in all its stages in one single moment. It was like time stopped and it’s the most creative clarity I’ve ever had.
“I completed a whole image of a cow made out of milk bottles in what people tell me was about 45 minutes.”
So when The Head — real name Flavio Del Piero — turned up on Buchanan’s Tenby doorstep in 2013, there were fears that they’d fall back into their old bad habits.
“Flavio and I spent an awful lot of time together without ever really establishing a close relationship. His humorous, over-the-top character really couldn’t be further away from what he’s like in real life and he needed the drugs to always get himself up to performing.
“Being off camera and just immersing himself in the music was the perfect way to rediscover his true self. Of course it wouldn’t last.”
NB and The Head enjoyed several prosperous years performing in Wales — they even opened for Korn when they played a small show in Milford Haven — but Del Piero returned to drugs in 2017 and earlier this year everything came crashing down again.
Del Piero was accused of inappropriately touching a living statue working in Tenby and instead of fighting the allegations, he fled to somewhere in the north of England ending the six-year musical relationship with Buchanan.
“Despite everything I’m not bitter,” explains Buchanan. “I could hold resentment to the bastards at CITV for cancelling Art Attack, I could despise Flavio for ruining the band and I could irrationally write letters to Disney Junior asking why they overlooked me for the 2011 reboot but I don’t.
“I think now may be the end of Neil Buchanan in the public eye. They don’t really want me and I’ve used enough PVA glue and LSD to last a life time.
“Me wearing these monstrous red sweaters is etched into the memory of generations of people around Britain. If that isn’t a legacy I can’t be happy with then I don’t know what would be.”
