Charles, of course.
What about him? Would know what to make of this.
Charles isn't here, Martin.
You may have noticed. Hm.
It's no longer dark in the daytime.
The wolf bitch has ceased to whelp in the streets, and so on.
What are you talking about?
Charles isn't out of chokey for another month.
So it's your call.
I just don't grasp what it's supposed to be.
Well, it is what it is.
Well, I know. A bottle of sperm.
Yes, I realise that Catherine.
I don't get what it is supposed to represent for the artist.
Struggle?
Well, there is rather a lot of it. Is there?
Is that your usual other-worldliness, Ali, or are you trying to frighten us?
What?
The question I am asking is, is it art?
Yes. Why?
Because the right people say it is.
Dean Wheelwright may be a copious wanker,
but Cork Street says he's the next Damien Hirst.
The Sun, of course, say he's both. And that's how you get the Turner Prize.
But this bloke, Wheelwright,
won't permit his work to be entered for the Turner,
because everybody thinks
he'll win hands down but he doesn't want to.
Is that right? Yup. That's because he's an artist.
Oh God, this is making my head hurt.
I think you have to meet him, Martin.
Was he frightened by a piece of silverware when he was younger?
He has the makings of a major player.
Oh hell, all right. Just don't expect me to shake hands with him.
Jamie has very kindly brought up the subject of Charles's absence.
And I was wondering whether the conversation we had yesterday
has stimulated any, um, thoughts.
It is a ticklish business, Martin.
It is a bit of a curly one.
But we have to accept the integrity of the company has been compromised.
Then, of course, there's this.
CHARLES: Left a bit, I think.
Better?
Charles! Well spotted!
Am I better? Undoubtedly.
But I thought...
You gave us to understand...
Yes, I did, rather didn't I? I thought it best.
You know how disagreeable I find overt displays of sentiment.
Balloons, banners shrieking, "Welcome Home Charles", that sort of thing.
Yes, of course.
On the other hand, in the privacy of this office, you could say it quietly.
I wouldn't mind that.
God, this is pleasant.
The ceiling?
No, not the ceiling. The absence of Charles.
Oh, right. Life's altogether less...
Frightening. Hectic.
Martin's slow.
Martin needs his nipples gently tweaking, from time to time.
Does he? Yes, it's in my contract.
But he's more alert than he lets on.
The vagueness is mainly there just to lull the clients while he rooks them.
I'm just so astonished.
Also, of course, the unanticipated arrival gives one the chance
to check out the true lie of the land.
The true lie?
Which orchards have been properly maintained,
which fences fallen into disrepair, which bridges...
burned.
Oh, well. I think on the whole you'll find most things pretty tickety-boo.
This key of mine, for instance.
Ah, now, that is interesting.
That is part of a wider, um...
It has one function in its life.
Er, while you were away...
Just one. And that's to unlock the door of my office.
We had a bit of a chat about the use of space.
And yet it no longer does so.
And from now on you and I are going to share this room, Charles.
That side of the desk will be yours.
We thought it would be a more, um, constructive arrangement.
"We", Martin?
Has democracy broken out in my absence,
or are you no longer willing to take responsibility
for your decision, because it's emblematic of distrust?
No, Charles I trust you, I trust you. Of course I trust you.
It's just that we must be very, very careful from now on.
For the good of the company.
Fine.
What?
You're putting me on probation.
Oh no, my dear chap.
I wouldn't go as far as to say that.
It's a sensible precaution.
I give you my word I shan't betray your faith in me.
Charles. You haven't done an Aitken on me, have you?
Have I come to know the grace of our Lord?
No. Have I seen the error of my ways?
Yes. Come.
Let's say boo to the troops.
And so liberating to be able to float an original idea, without
that sarcastic bastard slashing it to bloody little ribbons.
Dictatorial shit.
He's behind me, isn't he?
Charles, thank God you're back.
It's been a bloody nightmare, total shambles.
I mean, bless him, but Martin couldn't conduct a bus.
We've been seriously worried about the firm...
Jamie.
Yes, absolutely, I'm already ahead of you, shut up.
What's that?
A bottle of spunk.
We used to make do with coffee.
Otherwise, I see nothing else has changed.
It's a client.
Now that HAS changed.
Or, I should say, it's the work of a client.
He hopes to win the Turner Prize. Or rather he doesn't.
I see. Complicated one, is it?
We're on top of it. Of course you are.
Tell me all about it anyway,
you never know I might have some small insight which might be of assistance.
If that's all right with the team?
Of course. Absolutely.
Great. Brilliant.
Splendid.
OK. Damage limitation. I almost peed.
There's a mock-up of his face on Mark Thatcher's body...
He laughed.
Laughed? Fuck. We're dead. What about the screen saver?
He saw it.
OK, but it's not absolutely clear what the judge is doing to Charles.
It's not ideal that he saw that. We're dead.
Right. Martin and I are off to Hoxton for an audience with Mr Wheelwright.
A propos of none of which,
who was it who did the mock-up of me being buggered by a judge?
BOTH: Nick.
Dean uses the annex as a studio.
He's just finishing off a new piece.
He and I have talked seriously about metrication.
Litres rather than pints. Oh yes?
Well, Dean's concerned that imperial measures
have an unwelcome resonance of Imperial rule.
How long does it take him to produce a pint?
It's difficult to say.
As an artist and dealer we enjoy an unusually close relationship,
but he generally prefers me not to watch him while he's working.
Understandable.
But I'd say, ooh, about quarter of an hour.
Would you be interested to observe the creative process?
We find Mr Wheelwright between sessions.
No, he is engaged in the act itself. Is he?
He's remarkably discreet.
I think Martin was expecting to intrude upon a scene
of vigorous masturbation.
Sperm, last movement.
This movement... blood.
I like the cut of your metaphor.
The artist bled dry by the rapacious acquisitiveness
of this philistine cultural establishment.
What I do, ok?
It's about suffering.
Talk me through it, Dean, this whole cerebral horizon deal.
Synthesis. The unexpected collision of ideas from the full intellectual spectrum.
The big questions, yeah? Yeah.
The force can have strong influence on the weak-minded.
Ah. That much is indisputable.
Hesse, surely?
Those, Martin, are the actual words of Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Ah.
Sorry, not too hot on the early church. Charles is your man, really.
I think Dean here and I speak the same language.
Well, that's handy.
Come and blood.
As far as Cork Street's concerned, it just doesn't get tastier than that.
Does my cynicism shock you?
Not at all. On the contrary.
Charles Saatchi's crying out for a bottle of ejaculate.
But Dean won't let me sell him one.
He doesn't want fame, you see, he doesn't want money.
Which is a crying shame.
Because, frankly, there is a packet of money to be made.
Go on.
If Dean would accept his invitation to enter for the Turner,
he would sweep the board.
I'd stake my life on it. And the value of his work would rocket.
It's just such a waste.
Well...
...we can't have that.
Everybody shut up and listen to me.
OK. Especially you.
Here's what's going to happen.
Wheelwright here is going to take up his entry for the Turner Prize,
and what's more he is going to win.
Whether he likes it or not. So cheer up, you ludicrous drug-addled ninny.
You're going to make everybody rich.
Which you think you don't want, but that's just a symptom of your condition.
What's his condition?
He's a twit. "Rich", meaning?
In the first instance, Dean gets £2,500.
I thought the Turner was 25?
Two and a half grand, isn't bad, you know
for a poor boy from Chertsey who regards his own teeth
as imperialist aggressors and refuses to clean them.
Eurgh. And how does he win?
By parting with a great deal more of his blood than he originally intended.
Almost all of it, in fact.
Cat, who's that peculiarly pustular idiot you know at BBC Four? Producer.
You mean my brother.
He can have the rights for coverage of Wheelwright's work in progress
for half the sum agreed with Channel Four.
Which was what?
Half whatever we decide to give suede head here. Nick.
Arts programmes. Are there any left? Newsnight Review.
Don't put him on that. The Irishman will punch him.
NICK: There's radio. Front Row.
Better. Or do we want him punched?
Charles, may I just say what a pleasure it is to have you back.
I warned you I had seen the error of my ways, and I was telling the truth.
I've had time to reflect on my professional behaviour,
and have decided accordingly.
From now on in my career,
no more Mr nice guy.
So, what I'm commending to you, Dean, is a declaration of war on the art-object.
Right.
And your first assault will be a masterpiece of Trojan horsemanship.
You are going to blow the art world apart.
From the inside.
You, Dean, are going to bleed yourself to death.
Right. Right, now that's the bit I don't entirely, erm...
How does that work?
Over to you, Martin.
Dean, this is your team.
Jamie will be co-ordinating your public appearances.
I don't appear in public.
In that case his job will be gratifyingly straightforward.
DEAN: Fuck is that?
Erm, that's Alison.
Hello! NICK: This?
It's a mock-up of the device Charles has described to you.
90% of it, of course, is just decoration. Cool.
The original sketch was quite plain, but Charles said to goth it up a bit.
"Goth it up"? Just a bit.
CHARLES: Nick. Explain the plumbing.
OK, this is the 10% that's practical.
Your blood is drained here, in exactly the way you've established.
And it emerges here to fill the bottles.
It isn't his blood. No.
It's pigs' blood.
Correct. This bit here, this is the reservoir. The piggy blood bank.
Dean's blood is genuinely taken from him, and seen to be taken from him,
but it is secretly returned here.
Everything that comes out the end is porcine.
Dean Wheelwright's last minute Turner Prize entry is a kinetic sculpture
that is the self-destructing body of the artist himself.
Wheelwright will bleed himself dry, pint by pint, live on digital,
online, to the brink of expiration.
Then you go to the podium
and you reveal that the whole thing has been a gigantic fraud.
You say, "Tonight's victory is a deliberate sabotage
"of the corrupt and grasping art establishment."
I'd say I shafted them up the jacksie.
Well, that has the virtue of concision.
So, what do you say, Dean?
Give it a go?
See, if these pipes, here,
they get unplugged, I get up to have a slash.
Bottle that as well. Whatever.
The pipes get mixed up,
I get pumped full of pigs' blood?
CHARLES: Could not happen.
It's a binary choice. One pipe goes out, the other comes in.
Perhaps I should remain on site
to supervise the running of the installation.
No, no, all part of the service, from soup to nuts.
We'll take care of it.
Really, if the village idiot were left
in charge of hooking up the apparatus, they would get it right every time.
Every time.
OK.
Right then, nursey. Plug up.
Yeah, yeah. That's very interesting.
Can you see the money, Martin?
The first of a limited edition.
Nick put out feelers and he's heard 10 to 20 thousand...
...guineas. Good Lord.
And the sheer, seamless beauty of it is,
each bottle is more valuable than the last.
The more effort it costs Dean, as he floats towards oblivion
to dredge up a pint, the more remaining life
that pint contains.
The more precious it is.
Except, it isn't.
The whole thing's a hoax.
WE know that.
He's just having a bit of a lie down.
Nobody else knows that. No.
We cannot promote the selling of a man's blood knowing it is pigs' blood.
That is insider trading and it is precisely the thing...
Of course you know, what he really needs to do is actually die.
Imagine the price of that final bottle.
Just a pleasant thought.
(NEWS JINGLE PLAYS ON TV)
Dean Wheelwright's bid to win this year's Turner Prize,
an award given to the person who has made the greatest contribution
to art in Britain over the past year,
continues to be the subject of much media speculation.
But his work called, The Last Best Thing I Ever Did,
has inspired some contrasting reactions from members of the public.
WOMAN: He's well fit, not like that tosser in a box.
And I mean he's got a right to do it, yeah? What's he doing?
La jeunesse dore getting up to speed.
That's good, all good. Right, well, I'm off to Buck's to get pissed.
William Hill is apparently offering four to one on Dean winning the Turner.
But I think we can do better.
Let's see, webcam, digital, a small deciduous forest
of negative newspaper coverage.
What are we missing, Martin?
A talking head? Not Dean's. Somebody who talks intelligible English.
Agreed. Whose? Yours.
Newsnight. Open the lion's chops and stick your bonce right in.
Good thinking. Small change, you do it.
Oh, come off it, Charles.
Writers, royalty and thesps, yes, with pleasure.
Politicians - I grin and bear it, but artists? Really, Charles.
Francis Bacon squeezed your dong in The Colony Room once, Martin.
He did it to everyone.
It's nothing to do with the Bacon dong-squeezing, it's arty people.
They make me scream with boredom.
It's your name on the sign.
What sign?
The one you kicked under the filing cabinet.
The one with your name on it, and not mine.
All well?
No problem. Everything's fine.
The apparatus has been checked?
Just a few moments ago.
(MUMBLING) Been a while since anyone checked your apparatus.
So this hose with the pluses all over it
is supposed to be connected with the minusy one?
Yes, absolutely. Is there anything else I can help you with?
Shit.
Our final subject tonight is the Turner Prize short-listed
The Last Best Thing I Ever Did,
the so-called kinetic installation piece by Dean Wheelwright.
With me in the studio, Wheelwright's spokesman Martin McCabe,
and Newsnight Review regular Paul Morley.
Paul, 19, or 20 pints of blood, what is the artist asking of us here?
Well, the artist is asking of us to abandon all reason
and actually treat this sick bilge as if it's
saying something important, as if it's an important statement.
You don't think it's art?
I wouldn't put the name Dean Wheelwright
and "art" in the same universe, let alone the same sentence.
Bring in Martin McCabe.
Do you want to come back on that?
Oh, well, I think Paul states the case for the Daily Mail art lover very adroitly.
You're saying most people are too stupid to understand it?
I'm saying that people who love art, and who are comfortable with the Daily Mail,
will get a very succinct,
a very emotionally honest assessment of the piece from critics like...
Paul Morley. You southern snob.
But those who are accustomed to seek a little further, to probe
a little deeper into their experience of art,
may find what Dean is trying to achieve here, rather remarkable.
Is he going to win the Turner Prize?
Well, Mark, who knows?
I don't think it matters to him.
But those of us who have worked closely with Dean on the project just feel...
...privileged by the experience.
Ladies.
(PHONE RINGS)
Charles. Ten minutes to the presentation.
Make sure Wheelwright's awake, sitting up, speech in his hand.
Oh, and tell him not to agitate his scalp.
We know he's got nits, the country can be spared the information.
(PHONE RINGS)
Young Jamie. Martin. Just a thought.
Arrghh!
Have you got a moment?
And it gives me very great pleasure to announce the winner of this year's
JMW Turner Prize is The Last Best Thing I Ever Did by Dean Wheelwright.
Sadly, Dean is too frail to be with us tonight, but here to accept
his award on his behalf is his associate, Charles Prentiss.
(PHONE RINGS)
You should be here, Martin, sharing in our moment of glory.
MARTIN: I'm with Wheelwright.
Oh. So you are.
MARTIN: He's dead, Charles.
In what sense?
MARTIN: In the sense that he's no longer alive.
What are we going to do? MARTIN: Carry on as planned.
I see.
MARTIN: Fingers in the dyke, Charles. This is what you get the extra for.
Martin, you are an unconscionable shit.
MARTIN: Of course, if you don't feel up to it...
Ladies and gentlemen.
It must seem...
offensively cavalier to make a telephone conversation while you're applauding.
But the fact is I have just been speaking to the nurses monitoring this project.
In the past few minutes, even as Sir Peter was announcing the result,
Dean Wheelwright died.
(MURMURING)
In pursuit of his last
and greatest work of art.
We were advised by medical experts
that the human body could not sustain the expulsion of 20 pints of blood
in 48 hours. But that is the target that Dean was determined to achieve.
Though God knows we did our best to dis...
I'm sorry.
I think Dean foresaw this.
When I last spoke to him, not half an hour ago,
he pressed a small piece of paper into my hand.
A statement,
that he charged me to make on his behalf.
The object of living is not to arrive safely at the grave.
It is to hurl oneself at death with contempt,
with a body that can take no more.
This prize, this...
This is what
Dean Wheelwright most desired in his life.
But money,
he never cared for.
And so again, at his instruction,
I am returning this cheque for £25,000 to the sponsors of the event
and I beg that they will distribute it amongst the urban poor
of Chertsey.
(APPLAUSE)
Pax?
Vobiscum.
I think we must be about equal now.
Nightcap?
Well, if you're sure you can spare it.
Oh, THAT. That isn't wine.
Oh.
Oh, well. You can't beat a green drink.
No, that's blood.
You're not serious?
Humour, where would we be without it?
In Germany, probably.
Don't drop it. You couldn't possibly afford to replace it.
The urban poor of Chertsey.
The poor. How could one cope without them?
Well, happily we are now in a position to be magnanimous.
As for the dead artist, I understand that the felicitously named Miss Pink
has accepted full-ish responsibility?
Oh, full. Jamie had a hand in that.
Figuratively, one trusts.
Oh God, we've done some slutty stuff in our time.
Do you want a working definition of "whoredom"?
Intercourse with people you despise.
When have you ever doubted that that is what we do for a living?
Whores, Martin. And we're the best in the business, because we kiss.
Better?
We pulled it off.
And this is just the start.
I am going to make you king of Cork Street.
You shall sit with your balls in a bowlful of milk and honey,
watching me count your money for you.
Won't that be nice?
Eat up.
Where have you been? We've got work to do.
What is this, Dean? Talk to me.
I'm afraid he's not allowed to.
Now why don't you run along and programme the satellite navigation
to do some more hilarious swearing?
I haven't the slightest interest in how it was achieved, of course.
He's mine.
Ah, well, now you see, when you're excited,
you muddle your tenses, don't you? He WAS yours.
He IS mine.
He and I have an understanding.
You have an understanding.
I have a contract. Since when?
Since I discovered where he lived in Hammersmith,
sent a Mercedes round to collect him and show him
the flat that I'm buying him, stood him a four-course dinner at Claridge's
and watched him sign.
My word, he does eat a lot, doesn't he?
You delivered us a brand, Ashley.
And nursing brands to fiscal greatness is precisely what I do.
It's not what you do.
He wasn't your only client, was he?
You utter bastard.
On the contrary, Ashley.
At Prentiss McCabe, we care deeply about the little people.
Unless they get in our way,
and then we hurt them.
Still, no harm done, no hard feelings, as they say.
All's fair.
A decent cliché is such a comfort in times of trial, don't you think?