Your art involves a lot of 'performance', what do you see as the crossover between art and showbiz?

Basically I know that there was an art, not so long ago - maybe in the sixties - where sweeping the steps was seen as art. Not performance art but visual art. And that ties in with what I do now, an action in art. I don't class it as performance art but I do believe in what I called the Language Integration theory, where you integrate the language of art, of every sector of art into the other sectors of art, and into different sectors of society. Art needs to be redefined in different language systems in Britain. There are many different languages in Britain. The bus conductors speak a different language to the prime minister, who doesn't speak the same language as an art critic, who doesn't speak the same language as the dinner lady. Art has to be explained in the language system of different people in society. That's art for everyone, that's what the Arts Council are all about, that's what this present government is about. That's what they say they're about anyway.

Art should be accessible to everybody. There's people who I've met who are very ordinary people who have amazing ideas in the art world, but because they're not on that register they can't access the art world. I think the skill is getting the language system of the art world which is what I'm doing now. I'm not saying bring it to the lowest register, I'm saying bring the language so everyone can understand the same language. I've been doing this type of art for a year but I'm slowly accessing the language of the art world so I can integrate into it and then perhaps blow it apart. I won't blow it apart - I can't say that because they won't let me in, will they?

That's what Hirst has done - accessing the language and then changing it from the inside. If you're on the outside, it's very hard to change something.

Is this where your interest in business comes in as well?

Sciences as well, because I'm a scientist. Not only links between art and sciences but mental health, South Peru, you know. That sort of thing, integrating the arts. I thought of the idea of entering a novel in the Turner Prize,  and then one day perhaps having the Nobel Prize as the Turner Prize.

Art is transcending boundaries you know, like having the Pink Floyd playing in the Tate Gallery.

Yes, the boundaries are breaking down.

One of the ideas behind Barmy Art and the madness side of Barmy Art is the world is getting ever more random; chaos theory, really. This is where madness in art really comes in.

There's been 'Chaos Theory' in my head ever since I've been talking to you.

Yes, it's chaos in art really; it's bedlam in a gallery. I think if you dropped a thousand pounds in Scottish one pound notes on Cambridge it'd be bedlam in the community as well. Letting the loony out of the community, you know what I mean?
It'd be very hard to lock me up if I made the million pounds because I'd be quite famous by then. And I think there'd be a lot of happy people around, but it's healthy madness you know

That's a very important idea really, that there is healthy madness.

Exactly.

Madness isn't necessarily dark or frightening, it can be entertaining. If people are doing things for comedy value...

Exactly. Spike Milligan when he was at his best was mad wasn't he? Basically comedy is the acceptable side of mental illness. I think it's underrated in today's society. It is funny you know, it needs recognising as funny.

Another idea I had.. I think this sort of thing has been done before but, basically having a fridge in a gallery. Wednesday afternoon at 3 o'clock you go in to open the fridge for 3 seconds and shut it, and then you go home again for another week - that's your artwork. That is Barmy Art at its best.

So I actually phoned up Eastern Arts and said "I want a grant for opening my fridge up". I think they half captured the vision there but they thought it was a bit too, you know, interesting for them.

I don't know if you know this but I actually went - when I was mad once - I went into Eastern Arts in Cherry Hinton Hall, and ran - I wasn't naked at the time, I was naked just before then in a field, rolling myself in the field -  I ran in covered in mud and ran upstairs into the offices and sat down telling them all about my art. They promptly called the police and I ended up in Fulbourn but there you go. It was quite funny. Ooh dear, that was hilarious.

They like art but they like it at a distance?

I think they're a bit institututionalised, the art world and the galleries and that, they can't you know, anything a bit new....

They've got mortgages and families..

Exactly, yes.

Do you think the art world does take itself very seriously? The fashion world is much like that. I hope to introduce Barmy Fashion, where you wear loaves of bread on your head on the catwalk. Naomi Campbell with a rubber chicken on her head. That would be great, wouldn't it?

I think it feels it needs to look like it takes itself seriously. Yes, I think it does when it comes down to it.

So maybe it needs like the royal raspberry, like in Duchamp's day, dada-ism you know? I think it's time for another royal raspberry, isn't it?

But how long are people going to be fooled by this? As soon as art ceases to be elite, in other words the language of art is integrated into society, people are going to realise crap is crap, you know. Maybe you'll get the Leonardo da Vincis of this world coming back again.

Perhaps the root of this is the question of what is good art and what is bad art. In the course of this century, the idea that you can make any kind of value judgment like that has been attacked time and again until it's now no longer possible to make any definitive statement about what is good art and what is bad art. Unlike in, say, the nineteenth century when there was at least a general cultural standard.

Like religion in society as well. Religion set up standards in society and said "This is black, this is white". Now there's no black and white; there's nothing to judge it by.

And yet what you seem to be saying is we should be able to make judgments about it...

I think art is a number of things. You've got two things - a majority and a minority. In the majority you've got people who think it's good art and bad art, and you have the minority and you have to cater to both those really. It's also about education. If you're educated out of liking a figurative painting, then you're educated in to liking contemporary art. If you just see something like a child then you just like what is good. And I think what it will come down to is how a child, an adult child, sees art. Basically you can be educated into thinking anything, but also you can be educated out of thinking anything.

I think you're right in saying that art is a lot of different things to a lot of different people. There are different kinds of art that have different functions. Trying to establish one standard for all of it is probably impossible. Yet it should be possible to establish what the objectives of a particular piece of art are in its own terms and judge its success or failure in those terms.

I think the humour in art is judged by how much it makes most people laugh. It's entertainment rather than shocking.

It's quite shocking in the art world to say that art should be entertaining.

Really!? - But Damien Hirst entertains doesn't he?

He certainly does.

So why can't art entertain?

Do you know the work of Jeff Koons? - Years ago I suppose he'd have been called a pop artist. He then spent time, I think speculating and getting quite rich, I suppose on the stock market or something like that, and then started to make art, paying for it himself, which upset quite a lot of people because he would make large sculptures of kitsch, sentimental ornaments and over-the-top pornography of himself and his porn-star wife, enjoying normal sex. Now sentimentality and straightforward sex have been two no-go areas for art in galleries, and I think he used his financial independence and his existing reputation to make exactly the things most guaranteed to rub a certain type of critic up the wrong way. I thought these things were hugely entertaining myself.

I think if art is entertaining and has an explanation as well, then that's all the better and that's what's happening today.

So it's communication that matters, that what you do should communicate? Art should not be cryptic perhaps?

Mm. I've chatted to so many people in Cambridge - and Cambridge is quite an enlightened place - who've never heard of the Turner prize. What is art trying to do? Is it there just for a few people or is it for everybody? It pretends to be for everybody, so why shouldn't it be?

This is a question that art needs to face. Is it for an educated minority or is it for the whole of society?

It is, yes.