Tur television of Varnishing Day at the Royal Academy is going to make things a bit difficult for one or two artists. Under the sharp. eye of the television camera it will not be so easy to get away with certain tricks, writes a British columnist.
For example, only a few years back Hester Poop, whose quaintly charming domestic inter riots always go down well with the old ladies, varnished her picture of "Old World Breakfast Table" with marmalade, The result was that by the day of the Private jew it was covered with wasps. Everyone said: What realisra! You feel those wasps could sting you!"
Lord Dribblemere did get stung, for he bought the picture, marmalade, wasps and all, for 500 use he knew anything about art but se a critic had called it the Problem Picture of the year.
It now hangs in the Middlesbrough Munici-oilery, but the curator, being a purist washed off the marmalade and the wasps. There would have been a scandal about it but for the fact that Lord Dribblemere and his cronies own all the newspapers. And yet people talk of the freedom of the press!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.