THE guest director of Brighton Festival has revealed strong views about the city.

Artist David Shrigley, who lives in Kemp Town, has been involved in choosing acts who will perform at this year’s festival and will also be featuring in it himself.

In an interview with The Observer, Mr Shrigley was asked a question by a reader about living in Brighton, to which he replied “I love it” but Kemp Town is “full of dog s*** and lunatics”.

Mr Shrigley said: “It’s my kind of people in Brighton, it’s by the sea and the weather’s better than Glasgow.

“But it depends where you live as well.

“The bad thing about Kemp Town is that it’s full of dog s*** and lunatics. And I suspect Hove isn’t.

“I’m not talking about homeless people, I’m just talking about genuinely mad people, barking at the moon, who live in houses and who are mad.”

Mr Shrigley said that after moving to the area he was approached by a man with “get high” written in lipstick on his chest.

Mr Shrigley had parked on the pavement to unload his belongings and the man, who was “smoking a joint”, went on to tell him he should not be parked on the pavement.

During the interview, Mr Shrigley added: “Now, I like that, but I’d like to be like the people who come from a different part of town just to visit, to look at Mr Get High.”

Mr Shrigley lived in Glasgow for almost 30 years before moving to Brighton three years ago.

Geoffrey Bowden, former Queen’s Park ward councillor and chairman of the city’s economic development and culture committee, thought Mr Shrigley was being “a bit tongue in cheek”.

But he added: “Every part of the world has its quota of people ‘being different’.

“But it is extremely dangerous to generalise about any area based on an incident with one or two people.”

When contacted by The Argus, Mr Shrigley said: “I love Brighton, which is why I moved here and I do love the eccentricity of Kemp Town.

“I chose to live in Kemp Town for that reason.

“‘Lunatics’ was perhaps the wrong word to use, but there is a craziness to the place which generally is a good thing.

“Except when you are kept awake at night by people partying.

“There is a dog s*** problem though.”