Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, was filmed by an undercover News of the World reporter offering access to Prince Andrew in exchange for an agreed sum of £500,000. She was recorded to say to the undercover reporter, ‘look after me and you will get it back tenfold’
Fergie Caught Out
The cheek and the betrayal of this hurt me to the core. The Duchess acts as though the fame and privilege the public has bestowed on her and her ex-husband is something they were entitled to and can use to barter for cash, rather than treat with the responsibility and respect it deserves.
I decided to do some Revenge Art. I went to the Victoria and Albert museum, her husband’s ancestors’ home. There I posed as a museum guide and charged people money to show them around.
I was using the trust that the Royals had put in me, as a patron to their museum, and abusing it by accepting money from people to be given closer access to the items, just as Fergie had offered people closer access to Prince Andrew.
Unfortunately, too late, I realised the real victims were still the British public. More specifically it was the couple from Leeds who I gave the expensive and inaccurate tour to.
Sadly I didn’t get their full names so this is now a plea; if anyone visited the V&A recently and was given a private tour by someone who may have accidentally called it ‘the VA Clinic’, please get in touch with me for a reimbursement of your £85.
#1 by luke on June 2, 2010 - 10:33 pm
Funniest yet. I know the couple involved and they said not to be too upset as they themselves were mounting a parallel protest at fergie by giving money to jobbing writers at the V&A, pointedly refusing to donate it to any of the 832 charities she currently represents (and apparently draws stipends from). For shame your grace, for shame!
#2 by X on June 3, 2010 - 2:21 am
Oh Heidi!
I’m delighted to see that you are branching out into performance art. Your insight is too sharp, and your voice too shrill and grating, to be inhibited by the confines of any particular so-called ‘mediums’….or more-correctly-so-called ‘media’………or much-less-correctly-so-called ‘medias’.
I remain steadfast in the belief that her ex-Royal Dutchessness was herself completing a complex performance art piece when soliciting this money. So too were the News of the World journalists who were soliciting her solicitation. And the ultimate performance is sure to come from both parties’ solipsistic solicitors.
And let us not forget the owners and editors of the News of the World themselves. Their dedication to art in producing and distributing en masse such a biting satirical criticism of the state of journalism (or “journutainment”, as I have coined AND TRADE MARKED) is truly admirable. I know I, like the rest of its millions of purchasers, ‘read’ it every day and bathe in the scrumptiousness of the irony.
Bravo!
#3 by Heidi on June 3, 2010 - 7:43 am
oh dear, it seems the amount of performance art going on in the V&A here is becoming confusing, even for a professional artist like myself. But is the confusion itself art? Probably not. Unfortunate