Is it art, or will it get you arrested?

THE FRIDAY THING

LIFE AND OTHER BITS: UNTIL you go round Oldham market on a wet Saturday morning and examine the assembled throng, the idea of 1,000 people willingly stripping off to have their picture taken might sound appealing, if only in a kinky, fat-fetish sort of way.

If you or I walked up to folk in the street and asked them to take their clothes off and pose for a photograph (only the young and lovely, of course) we’d get locked up.

But American “artist” Spencer Tunick, goes round the world getting thousands of folk — all sorts of lumpy, droopy, bumpy, tall, squat and frankly grizzly — to turn up, strip off and stand in a chilled, brazen crowd while he takes their picture. Apparently it’s art, and it’s coming here without its clothes on.

Mr Tunick wants a thousand of us (count me out) to pose in eight locations in Manchester and Salford — they will be taken there in heated buses, which is very thoughtful but, if they’ve got no clothes on, where are they going to put their tickets?

The ever-so arty folk at the Lowry think that all this goose-pimpled flesh (thoughts of the plucked Christmas turkey come to mind) will help them celebrate their 10th anniversary. Whatever happened to champagne and a piece of cake?

But is it art? The late, lamented landlord at the Royal Oak Hotel, the legendary Tommy Jackson, had his own take on art. When Mrs J left him home alone for a week his first attempt to cook his tea ended up with a pan of burned cabbage.

Jackson put it in a frame and hung it in the bar over the title: “Burned Cabbage, Jackson”

Now that’s what I call priceless art!


CREDIT where it’s due, Gordon’s Government has had more flack than flowers for bringing the country to its knees and creating debts that mean our great grandchildren will have to live in caves to pay it off.

The NHS is in a shambles, our troops are fighting two wars with the modern equivalent of pitch forks and straw hats, but there is a silver lining.

Violent crime is booming, cannabis farms have never had it so good and public sector workers have had 15 per cent more in pay rises (rises? what are rises?) than the rest of us.

Labour, the party of the working classes. Except too many of the workers — well over a million — can’t find a job.


FINAL WORD: SO what shall we do with Mumps Bridge? Break it into tiny pieces and sell them off to the heritage champions and save the rubbish brigade. They’ll just love all that rust.