IT IS not so much the mansion he owns or the hundreds of millions he is worth that matter, says Damien Hirst, it is the recognition they bring that counts.

During an interview for a new television series, the artist said: "I always think that money is a fantastic tool to get people to take you seriously."

In the first programme of In Confidence, due to be broadcast on Sky Arts on April 6, Hirst goes on to say that "as languages are an amazing thing, money is like a key. They are the keys to the world".

He should know. Hirst is by far Britain's wealthiest artist. In the next Sunday Times Rich List his personal worth will be calculated at £215m. Though slightly down on the previous year, he remains far richer than any other British artist.

In September 2008 - on the day that Lehman Brothers was declared bankrupt - a sale of Hirst's work at Sotheby's in London raised a record £111m. As he had not sold through a gallery, the majority of the money went to the artist.

In the interview the 44-year-old artist, who has homes in the West Country and Mexico, talks to Professor Laurie Taylor about the effect of his comparative poverty as a youth. "When I was a kid growing up I never had any money. One thing I loved after the auction was walking down Bond Street and getting recognised by businessmen. I never got that before."

Hirst tells Taylor how he feels sorry for an artist such as Van Gogh, whose works never sold until after his death. "It was a real shame that you don't get this until you are dead - that whole Van Gogh thing."

Art, as Hirst points out, had until recently been considered "a leisure thing, for those ladies who lunch and buy art. You know, the ones who have rich husbands. I sort of like the fact the husbands used to be saying, ‘Who is this Damien Hirst?'"

Hirst is also asked how he reacted to damning reviews of his recent exhibition of paintings at The Wallace Collection in London. "Well, after the success of the auction, I expected the critics to smash me down," he said. "I was bound to get it. I had it coming, don't you think?

"But it's like what Warhol said, ‘You don't read your reviews; you weigh them'."

Art haul

Valued at £215m in the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List, Damien Hirst is Britain's wealthiest artist.

A large chunk of his fortune was accumulated in September 2008 when, on the day that the American investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, Hirst sold £111.4m worth of art at Sotheby's. It followed on from a sale in 2007 that netted £130m. That year, Hirst's jewel-encrusted skull, For the Love of God, sold for £50m although the artist kept a stake in it.

He has a vast studio in Gloucestershire and recently bought a £3m country pile there.