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You probably won't know, but I do an awful lot of work for charity, but I don't like to talk about it. It's very frustrating for the charities involved as they really want the publicity, but I refuse to mention them or all the work I do, because I don't want to be accused of doing all that work just to get credit.
Having said that I have raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for these secret charities, and it'd be horrible if I did that and no one knew about it. How otherwise would I get an OBE and have people turn a blind eye to the stuff I do to animal corpses (I eat bits of dead animal almost every day, but it's kept out of the media due to me running a half-marathon four years ago)?
Anyway one of the many charity things I did with my valuable time (when I could be playing snooker against myself or clearing stones or falling asleep on a sofa because I am too old to have kids)
was to draw a picture for the Samarivans project.
In this celebrities and artists (I am presuming I am in the latter category as no one knows who I am and artists only get famous once they are dead) were asked to make some kind of art based around a VW camper van by the brilliant Hertfordshire based artist
Sarah Graham. Of course, after ensuring my contribution would be entirely anonymous I leapt at the opportunity. Sarah asked if I could relax that policy as she wanted to sell the paintings and get some publicity and seemed to think that my artwork wouldn't sell unless some gullible fan bought it, but I insisted. All my charity work is secret.
The problem for me was that in spite of being a soon to be famous dead artist, I can't really draw or anything (which is why my art projects involve moving stones around a field) but I do have a talented artist in the family, Phoebe Herring (
not that one).
So we decided to do the picture together. Which involved Phoebe doing all the actual drawing and most of the colouring and me colouring some of the grass and a bit of the road (check out the grass on the left of the picture which I think you'll agree is the best bit).
Much to my embarrassment Sarah went against my wishes and named me in the ebay auction and in the subsequent blitz of bidding the work went for something like £108. You're welcome, the Samaritans. I am just doing my bit. Phoebe seemed to feel that she was responsible for £107.99 of that figure, but I am like Damien Hirst getting arts students to cut up all my cows for me and then just sticking my name on it. Except I don't even bother to tell the art students what to do.
Anyway, I have reluctantly told you this story of my charitable deeds because all the van pictures have been published in a book and today Catie, Phoebe and me went to Sarah's studio to pick up a copy. Sarah's studio is on an industrial estate, up some stairs, past some offices and the kind of place you imagine you might have been sent to by a serial killer to be murdered, but there was no murder on offer, just sweets and drinks and some fabulous works of art. Sarah paints pictures of Chupa Chups and ice cream and penny chews (amongst much else) and her studio and herself are a blaze of wonderful colour. If more artists painted pictures of Refresher chews and doughnuts rather than nude women and men being crucified, I might have got into art earlier!
Sarah's a proper big deal in the art world too but she was down to earth and very friendly and encouraging to Phoebe who went away with a signed post card that she's proudly showing to everyone. Phoebe is thrilled to have her picture in a book, but has also enjoyed looking through the other 179 artworks in it, pointing out the ones she likes. It's a terrific project and well done to Sarah and David her partner, who have raised approaching £50,000 and put in a lot of hard work. Arguably harder work than colouring in a bit of grass. It's not for me to comment.
Anyway, so lovely to see a top artist being so encouraging to someone starting on their art journey. Most kindnesses in this world are given freely and in an unshowy fashion and I reckon when it comes down to it God is able to spot the people who are doing stuff because they are genuinely good and those who are doing it for self-glory or to hide some dark hidden crevice in their soul. Unless they're really good at hiding it or think they are cleverer than God. So either way, I'll be fine.
