Dancing with Idiots

Another kick in the arts for mystified tax payers

I’m thinking of creating a standard template for some of the short London stories that go at the end of this column. It will run something like this:

[World-famous London Arts Organisation that ought to know better] has thrown away its yearly grant of [large number] million pounds on producing some terrible rubbish that only the eleven cleverest people in the country can understand. They now need a bailout of [even larger number] million pounds to continue operating. Sir [double-barrelled surname], the organisation’s director, has resigned in disgrace. Again.

This month, it was the English National Ballet. Director Matz Skoog arrived in 2001 cheerfully joking that all the classics should be banned for three years to drive ballet fans into the arms of new work. Five years later, this brilliant plan has halved audiences, and now the company requires a massive bailout, which will not aim to increase audiences, but simply allow ENB to carry on paying the wages. Skoogie himself is heading off to pastures new in October, the fourth director to leave the organisation in a decade.

Next month, no doubt, it’ll be the Royal Opera House, cap in hand after blowing their entire subsidy on an impenetrable fifteen-hour epic written by an unknown Eastern European existentialist. The London Symphony Orchestra will follow, after audiences were inexplicably low for a ‘ground-breaking’ season of totally silent works by experimental New York composer John Cage.

The sums of money in question are pretty small compared to the amount it costs to, say, run a medium-sized hospital, or rain missiles on an enemy of democracy. Opera, ballet and classical music can be incredible experiences, they bring in wealthy tourists, and I don’t think they cause the police too much trouble. (“Closing time at Sadler’s Wells, Sarge, we’d better break out the water cannons and CS gas”)

I understand that arts organisations need to innovate in order to survive. I even appreciate that excellence can only be achieved with public subsidy. I admit that I know next to nothing about the complexities of keeping 137 half-starved ballerinas and drunken musicians in some kind of order. I still think these people should get a grip and stop chucking my scratch card money away on vanity projects.

Matron cleans the politicians off the ward

Barnet NHS has issued a ban to all political parties to stop over-zealous campaigners making a political battleground of their already overcrowded hospital. No canvassing will be allowed anywhere in the hospital, sparing patients from unwanted attention while they are cared for. If only we could put up some kind of exclusion zone on my road…

Perpetual Student just wants to be Pikey

Mark MacGowan, a 36 year old art student, has keyed over 30 cars in Camberwell for a project which he described as a study on "emotional involvement… rage and jealousy". The Arts Council said he was "more likely to get a visit from the law than any further funding from us".

Blood Banker

Charles Saatchi has sold Marc Quinn’s ‘Self’, the sculpture composed entirely of the artist's blood, to an American collector for a reputed profit of £1,487,000, scotching rumours that Nigella Lawson had accidentally melted it while installing her new fridge. Just as well given the obscene profit her hubby has just realised from the blood of his protégé.

Previouse article

 

Next article