On Monday evening, with assured impunity, the Conservative celebration staged a grand ritual reenactment of its “money for entry” ethos, internet hosting a £20,000-a-table fundraiser on the Victoria and Albert Museum. Lubov Chernukhin, the spouse of Vladimir Putin’s former deputy finance minister, and one-time Neighbours star Holly Valance, had been amongst wealth-smeared friends invited to bid for a three-pronged dinner expertise with Boris Johnson, David Cameron and Theresa Might. The horrific meal, which might probably largely function Might patiently making an attempt to scrub up the mess made by Cameron and Johnson, ultimately went for £120,000 or the price of 49,792 college dinners at £2.41 a time.
On condition that Nadine Dorries had already blabbed, earlier than the confidence vote earlier this month, on how deeply the celebration was beholden to its donors, you’d suppose the Conservatives would now be eager to keep away from showing so conspicuously up for lease and would have held the occasion someplace secret, such because the vault storing the unredacted Russia report, Sue Grey’s findings on the Abba celebration and the remainder of Johnson’s unaccounted for youngsters.
However to the Conservatives, the entire world is only a urine-stained cellphone field, its peeling pink paint partitions stickered with gaudy commercials for companies accessible. Peerships? PPE contracts? Peeing? That can do properly, sir, and would you prefer to stroke Lulu Lytle’s gold wallpaper too? However wait, my previous good friend, I get forward of myself. Sit down right here some time by the fireplace and eat this rustic cheese. I'd worth your opinion on probably the most curious story I'm about to inform you.
As it's possible you'll know, throughout lockdown, the critically acclaimed rockumentary I made with the director Michael Cumming, King Rocker (“The brand new gold customary for rockumentaries” – the Scotsman), trickled out on to streaming companies. Quickly, we had been the proud recipients of a certificates, personally signed by the then tradition secretary Oliver Dowden himself, stating that we had made a “British movie” that handled “British themes”. We had been glad to have contributed in the direction of Brexit Britain’s cultural renaissance and had been relieved, within the present local weather, to not have made something that could possibly be thought-about remotely international. However what would we flip our crowdfunded cameras on subsequent?
Throughout my lockdown perambulations, I had change into fascinated by numerous Hackney addresses that had every been occupied, at numerous occasions, by completely different vital cultural figures. Who knew that the identical flat above a minicab firm in Dalston had, centuries aside, been the house of the unconventional pamphleteer Daniel Defoe, the unconventional mother and father of the unconventional pre-Raphaelite ceramicist William De Morgan, and the drummer from Britpop-era hit-makers Dodgy?
I posited a cinematic satire of psychogeography during which Dodgy’s 1996 hit Good Sufficient in some way exerts an affect, backwards by time, on De Morgan’s idealistic resolution to affix William Morris in aiming to enhance abnormal individuals’s lives with a give attention to each magnificence and performance. “If it’s ok for you, it’s ok for me!”
With this concept in thoughts, I've spent the spare moments of my present standup tour in search of out examples of De Morgan’s work in numerous provincial collections, the spotlight being Guildford’s Watts Gallery (although Bradford Cathedral had some good De Morgan stained glass), earlier than lastly contacting the Victoria and Albert’s head of ceramics, Dr Wilhelmina Mezzotint, in an try to achieve direct entry to a few of his best artwork. Our thought was to movie the drummer from Dodgy beating out the rhythm to Good Sufficient on certainly one of De Morgan’s now priceless Fulham-fired vases and Mezzotint had appeared amenable. However, previous good friend, unusual forces had been to place a cease to our plans.
The Victoria and Albert Museum’s chair is Conservative donor Nicholas Coleridge and its board consists of Ben Elliot, the Tory co-chairman, lately uncovered as knowledgeable oligarch facilitator, smoothing the London social paths for a few of Putin’s closest pals beneath the auspices of his Quintessentially firm. Solidarity with Ukraine!
In a previous Conservative fundraiser, one of many public sale prizes was a personal tour of the museum itself hosted by Coleridge. However the museum is a charitable physique owned by the general public and its trustees, its constitution states, ought to be politically neutral. Is Coleridge the museum’s pimp and Elliot the person who places his playing cards within the phone packing containers? Coleridge and his Conservative pals have made our museum, that grande dame of Kensington, their whore. Poor previous duchess in her William Morris wallpapered boudoir! Her knees is not going to take it. For God’s sake, Coleridge, present some compassion! Have some disgrace!! This can be a temple of tradition, not a brothel the place you entertain your shoppers.
In Western Australia, 25 years in the past, I took a daytime vacationer tour of a nonetheless functioning Nineteenth-century frontier bordello within the mining metropolis of Kalgoorlie. Its flocked inside had extra dignity than the Victoria and Albert does in the present day, the museum abruptly little greater than a dirty nook for the Conservatives to do their foul enterprise, donors slapping soiled money down on the dressing desk as they go away, spent and ashamed.
Mezzotint contacted me in a panic on Tuesday morning. She was Dutch and I had all the time suspected that after she had discovered who I and the drummer from Dodgy had been, from extra culturally clued-in colleagues, she would deny us entry to De Morgan’s pottery and certainly our assembly was off. However not for the explanations I imagined. Mezzotint had come into work that morning to search out that the designs had been disappearing, earlier than her eyes, from De Morgan’s tiles and vases. Panicked employees examined the air - was some stray chemical stripping the ceramics? - after which cell phones started buzzing in refrain, as heads of division all around the constructing reported the sudden and inexplicable deterioration of the artefacts of their care. What could possibly be inflicting it? Was it one thing they'd carried out?
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