Why I’m entering my art for the Turner Prize

FRENCH artist in Paris is sitting on eggs for 26 days until they hatch in his latest piece of performance art.

Last month he spent a week between two slabs of limestone.

The amazing thing is that people take him, along with performance and conceptual art, seriously.

They pay good money to see works such as Tracey Emin’s unmade bed, a pile of bricks, paintings using elephant dung and an empty room in which the lights go on and off, which is not so special when you think about it.

You open the door, switch on the light, see it’s an empty room, and switch it off again.

One artist sealed his own poo in tins and offered them for sale for their weight in gold, while another barricaded a Paris street with oil barrels and claimed the resulting traffic jam was art.

Giving him a good kick up the backside would have been better performance art. I take a similar view to that of a past chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts who described conceptual art as “pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat” that was in danger of disappearing up its own bottom.

Mind you, I can see the advantage of fooling enough of the people, enough of the time to be awarded a grant and exhibition space for fee-paying punters. Which is why I’m calling my latest piece of performance art Suburban Life.

It will feature me lounging on the settee in our front room watching television while eating a takeaway curry.

This will be staged three nights a week and entrance, in 10-minute slots that will include a free papadum, is a tenner.

Alternatively, you can watch through the window for a fiver but no papadum.

I shall be entering myself for the Turner Prize at the Tate Modern and will be marketing the idea for anyone to copy for a fee so they can also become performance artists.

Twenty pounds in a plain brown envelope to the usual address will get you an artistic license by return.