A question of coleslaw…

When I heard that Antony Worall Thompson had been arrested for shoplifting last week I wasn’t at all surprised. After all a man who doodles a twirling time-tunnel psychedelic carrot for charity, colouring it in with fluorescent marker, and then having to re-examine his spelling, can’t be all there can he?

All where?
There, you know.
Where there?
There.
Ah, there! Did he just slip something in his pocket?

I bid for this doodle on e-bay a few years back. Each March a whole bunch of pen-and-pencilled-up celebrities auction off their doodles for the epilepsy charity and I was lucky enough to get AWT’s carrot, plus a very fine signature, for around fifteen pounds or so. Of course if it had been on display in Tesco I could probably have simply slipped it into my pocket and slowly, so as not to cause any suspicion, walked away - but it wasn’t, so I couldn’t.

No, instead I bought my doodle in good faith and now (shock, horror) I find that my doodler is a thief who (if his appearance on TV last Sunday is to be believed) was sent away to boarding school at three, sexually abused, and has been undergoing psychotherapy for his ‘addiction’ - as he calls his petty thievery of cheeses and marked-down coleslaw.

How very outrageous! The nicking that is, not the abuse.

Mind you, watching him at the weekend I saw a very different man from the TV chef I’ve so disliked whenever I’ve watched him secreting his bumptious personality into my living room through the television screen. Good job that he can’t reach in through the telly, he might nick the remote and set it to repeat ‘Ready, Steady, Cook’ over and over ad infinitum.

Hell in a shopping-trolley.

Actually, I almost felt sorry for the obviously caught, confused, cook trying so hard to justify himself and failing, putting up with the tired jokes and jibes of the panel of jokers and satirists like the proverbial lamb (don’t forget the rosemary and fennel rub) to the slaughter.

Almost, but not quite.

Looking at his downcast eyes, the way his head hung, beard on chins, listening to his distracted mumbling excuses, I was sure I could see the old AWT beneath, the one that would have done it simply because he wanted to, because he could, and to slip the finger to everybody and everything, the angry AWT that we all know so well. The one that drew the jagged, over-bright, psychedelic carrot that hangs on my kitchen wall.

I’m sure that he’ll be back. But the question remains – Why?

Why a carrot?
Why a psychedelic one?
Why all those receding, diminishing, squares?
And just why is it drawn so very much off-centre to the page – because it is… very off-centre.

If I look closely can I see it’s the work of a sexually abused chef who was sent away to boarding school aged three and went on to become a shoplifter appearing on a comedy chat show as penance?

Maybe.

Perhaps I should put it up on e-bay, who knows AWT’s new infamy might increase its value, or maybe I should show it to his psychotherapist. Perhaps his doodle holds the answers – after all, they put carrots in coleslaw don’t they?