“Big question, but to me, van Gogh is the finest painter of them all; certainly the most popular great painter of all time: The most beloved; his command of colour; the most magnificent. He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world… no one had ever done it before. Perhaps no one ever will again. To my mind that strange wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world’s greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived.”

Like most people, I bawled my eyes out with this episode - I am a huge fan of Van Gogh’s artwork. And so it was, that on my 25th birthday, in the Musee D’Orsay, Paris, France, I stood but a few centimetres away from Van Gogh’s self portrait and nearly cried. His work is just stunning; the colours, the textures….It was such an incredible and humbling experience; I still well up with tears now, knowing that I was able to stand before his work.