The TV comedian's first major solo exhibition starts on Wednesday in Birmingham.

Joe Lycett wants his first major solo art exhibition to inspire others to get creative A life-sized pink woolly mammoth, Ozzy Osbourne, and an old phone are among some of the subjects comedian and artist Joe Lycett hopes will inspire others to get creative. Everything Must Go at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery was inspired by "things that are no longer with us", he said, describing his first major solo art exhibition as "a neon graveyard, full of colour". "I want people to come in and go, 'well I could do that', and then go and do it, please, go and do it better," he said. "It's so good for you and I really get cross when people go, 'oh I'm not really creative'. If you can put pen to paper, you're creative, you can make things." Lycett has been working on the collection, which opens on Wednesday, over the past year. He said it sprang from his love of painting animals, then became an "exercise in looking into grief", also honouring friends who had died. Its centrepiece is the mixed media sculpture of Martin the mammoth, which has ceramic yellow toenails and a latex tongue.