Weekly News: Nizlopi, Armando, Laura Woods, Jason Byrne
 One day I shall sell my 1976 Cadillac Brougham limousine. It’s a fabulous car, a monster that allowed me to roam the streets of New York like Godzilla or King Kong. If ever there was a car that deserved to perch on the pinnacle of the Empire State Building, it’s my Caddy.
I haven’t driven it for decades, though. It’s a museum piece, covered in bent spoons and crystals collected from the most famous people on the planet — Jackie Kennedy, the Dalai Lama, Salvador Dali, John Lennon and more than a thousand others. I’m constantly seeking to add to the cutlery set, but keeping up standards is next to impossible. I mean, how do you beat a spoon from Elvis Presley?
When I turned to page 111 of a recent Sotheby’s catalogue, I saw a way. Up for auction was a spoon owned by James I, dating back to 1604, with the royal seal at the top of its stem — its regal owner was using it to sup soup when Hamlet was being staged for the first time. To buy or not to buy... it wasn’t a difficult decision.
Bidding was intense, but I won with a four-figure pledge. Before mounting the spoon on the Caddy’s hood, I took it to my friend Armando Vinci in Bond Street, one of the world’s top connoisseurs of silverware. “It’s exceptional,” he said. “Very rare. You might hunt a lifetime and never find another like it.”
But is it worth what I paid for it? Not as an eating utensil, that’s for sure — a plastic spoon from a motorway cafe would do the job as well. Not as a lump of precious metal — silver is nowhere near as valuable as gold or platinum.
As part of a unique artwork, though, it is priceless. It fills a dimension that was missing on my Caddy, an artefact both antique and royal. When I sell the car, I want to be able to point to pieces that represent every kind of human superlative: scientific geniuses, entertainment superstars, world statesmen, religious gurus... and absolute monarchs.
And the pricetag will reflect the silverware’s glorous heritage. I expect to sell for no less than £1 million, and that money will go into either a trust or property for my children. I believe it is the duty of a father to do the very best for his sons and daughters. They are the ultimate responsibility.When I paid a fortune for a fragment of the past, I was also investing in the future for Daniel and Natalie.
 The two well--mannered young men on my flight to Dublin didn’t look like popstars. They certainly didn’t look like an Indie band glorying in the name of Nizlopi, with a Number One in Ireland and a hit record tipped for the top of the charts in Britain.
But I soon discovered that their ‘JCB Song’ doesn’t sound like an indie epic either. You couldn’t make the mistake of thinking its bouncy country-and-western beat was a forgotten Nirvana disc. It’s infuriatingly catchy, and thought-provolking too, the story of a five-year-old who loves riding on his Dad’s digger because it makes him feel he can beat to bullies at school.
“We recorded it in our garden shed,” Luke Concannon and John Parker told me. They’re both 27, both from Leamington Spa, and they met on the school bus. The anti-bullying stance is straight from the heart, too:
“I was trying to explain how I felt about those people when I was a kid,” explained Luke, “and how some things can give you the confidence to stand up to them.
“It’s incredible to be Number One. Just shows what you can do if you believe in yourself, because we definitely don’t have a big advertising budget. We’re not Westlife!”
Their courage won through a couple of days later, when they too the Number One spot in the UK. And I’m still humming that tune. I think I’ll have to download it as the ringtone on my phone.
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I had great fun in Dublin, doing a show with presenter Laura Woods and comedian Jason Byrne. Jason is one of those stand-ups who can reduce you to tears of laughter with a silent stare. He has an act where he dresses up celebrities in outlandish disguises and sends them onto the streets to accost members of the public. Laura’s production crew wanted to play a jape on him, and brought his mother to the studio under a heavy disguise. No fooling Jason, though — as soon as she opened her mouth, he yelped, “Mum! What are you doing here?”
My dear friends Ritza and George Kiriacou are staging an exhibition of my artwork in their West End gallery, featuring beautiful bowls and plates in silver, aluminium and glass, all decorated with my designs. I am extremely flattered — though I have had storming successes with these pieces in Athens and Cyprus, it’s the first time I’ve enjoyed a London success.
The official opening was thronged, and one guest, the Countess Maria Christina de Rosenthal of Transylvania, bought forty works for her friends. She was enjoying herself — it was her birthday, and mine fell a couple of days letter, so we went to a wonderful restaurant afterwards, one of my favourite tradition Lebanese eateries, for a fabulous Middle Eastern spread.
Maria Christina shares my enthusiasm for collecting. “These are the antiques of the future,” she told me. I believe she’s right — maybe in 150 years, David Dickinson will be appraising them on his show. And I bet he won’t look a day older!
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