The argument over whether or not a statue of Nelson Mandela should be erected in the north terrace of Trafalgar Square has now turned into a full blown 'war of words'. And, wouldn't you know it, Ken Livingstone is right at the heart of the furore.
Today's Guardian reports that a planning inquiry meeting organised to decide the fate of the Mandela statue "erupted" when Ken likened a sculpture of Harold Wilson by Glynn Williams, professor of sculpture at the Royal College of Art, to "a large dog mess".
Prof' Williams created the statue of Wilson to stand outside Huddersfield station but lost the commission to Ian Walters, the man behind Ken's favourite Mandela statue (that's him pictured with his incredibly lifelike creation).
To make his point Ken decided to stand outside today's meeting with a picture of Williams' Statue and say:
The only sense that it looks like Harold Wilson is if Harold Wilson has been dead for several days and has started to decompose and is emerging out of a large pile of dog mess.
It is all very well for people with fine arts degrees, but for ordinary people like myself we want a statue to look like the person.
We do not want to have to find someone with an art degree to explain what we are looking at.
Williams, (who was there to represent Westminster council, which is opposing the placing of a Mandela statue in front of the National Gallery...are you still with us?) had described the Mandela statue by Walters as "run-of-the-mill mediocre modelling" and claimed that "a good sculptor of more originality and inventiveness should have been chosen."
Williams and Walters then proceeded to roll around on the floor grabbing each others' hair and attempting to claw their opponent's eyes out while Ken stood on the sidelines with Lord Attenborough and Harold Wilson's widow chanting "Fight! Fight!".
