You do a lot of challenging in your art, do you get challenged back?

Not really, no.

Because what you do is very confrontational.

Well I don't think it is - wearing a salmon on my head is confrontational?

I haven't got beaten up yet or anything. I'm a big lad, everybody thinks "He's a bit potty, he's a bit frightening" maybe, but I don't think people are frightened of me. I think they find it humourous. They see me as eccentric and they're very fond of eccentrics in Cambridge.

I was thinking more of the art world itself. You said some people told you not to phone...

Oh, no. Actually, I think because I make some quite good points sometimes they're willing to put up with my eccentricities. The Tate gallery slammed down the phone a couple of times because they're at the top whack of art, they're very busy people. But Eastern Arts, they say "Leave a message any time". Kettle's Yard left their answering machine off, so I couldn't leave messages. That was quite good.

I left a message one day rather manically and called Damien Hirst - I think Damien Hirst's got quite a low IQ or something, his IQ isn't very high. But even so he's a very creative chap. I can't deny that, but I think I called him a rude word.

So basically Kettle's Yard haven't put their answering machine on since then.

I've been quite notorious in the art world. The art world are very good, particularly Eastern Arts. Steve Hollier has been absolutely wonderful. He accepts that some of the stuff I do may be a bit potty, but some of the stuff has some validity and so he accepts it.

That's what you'd expect from any artist, they produce some substandard work, some OK work and some good work.

Yes.

And some cracking good work.

Which is Venus then? Which category is Venus going to come in? Is Venus going to be one of the high points?

I think this is conceptualism at it's best. Obviously I can't have Venus in the gallery but I could have a representation of Venus in photographs.

What intrigues me is how you manage to mount any kind of event for an exhibition of Venus.

Basically my gallery exhibitions are empty galleries with just a plaque saying "This is an exhibition of Venus. Go outside and look at it."

I think my art is very hard to have within the gallery space. It's coming out of the gallery space. Conceptual art is very hard to put in the gallery space.

I heard of one artist - I thought this was absolutely brilliant - where he shut the whole gallery for the duration of the exhibition so people couldn't enter it. Absolutely wonderful. That really inspired me and I thought "That is lovely". Got me really excited, that one.

That reminds me of the time Frank Zappa at one big concert actually didn't feel like playing when it came to it, so he went on to the stage and played cards for 2 hours, cancelled the concert and gave everybody their money back.

That's absolutely lovely. That's the sort of thing people remember and makes people laugh.

I thought of suing the Tate gallery for destroying my stick as a work of art. Maybe I'll do that one day.

You'd have to establish the value of it, wouldn't you?

I'd get someone to say "I would have paid ten thousand for that", slip him a couple of quid for saying it.

Potentially it could be very valuable since the value of a work of art is defined by its uniqueness, and a twig is absolutely unique, being a living thing.

I think the Tate realised that; they're very reticent to chuck anything away, they always send it back to you. But they actually chucked my stick away, this is quite...

An extreme action.

It was, wasn't it? Because they don't want to get sued, but they chucked my stick away. 'Silly buggers' - that was quite an original. That was early humour in conceptualism. I don't know whether there was much humour before then but I think they just thought it was too silly to even recognise. It's beyond conception, beyond conceptualism, beyond their conception!.