Tales from the Cotswolds: The Tale of the Golden Toilet

In 2016 the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan created a satirical piece of participatory art called 'America'; a fully functioning toilet made of 18 karat gold and worth around £4.8 million.  Made to look like the toilets in the Guggenheim museum in New York it was installed in one of the bathrooms there for the public to use.  A security guard was posted outside and according to the museum over 100,000 people waited in line to use it.

What does this have to do with the Cotswolds?  Fast forward to September 2019 and cross the Atlantic to Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, where the toilet was placed in a water closet used by the former British prime minister and iconic leader, Winston Churchill as part of a larger exhibition by the artist. In the early hours of Sunday 15th September, the toilet was stolen.  The game was afoot.

Thames Valley police appeared on the local news where a spokesman for the force kept a straight face while he delivered a summary of events; plumbing had been smashed to remove the toilet causing significant damage and flooding, the robbers mounted a very fast smash and grab raid and a 66 year old man had been arrested and was still in police custody. 

According to the BBC, when Cattelan was informed of the theft of his work from one of the largest stately homes in England his first thought was, 'why would anyone want to steal a toilet?'.  He claims he then remembered he had made it from 18 karat gold and it was worth almost £5 million.  Well remembered Maurizio.  

Cattelan is known as a serial prankster who once stole the whole show of an artist in Amsterdam and tried to pass it off as his own work citing it as a survival tactic.  He had been given just two weeks to produce work for his latest exhibition and decided to take the 'path of least resistance' in order to put on a show.  Despite this, the artist claims he has nothing to do with the theft of the toilet but always liked heist movies and was happy to finally be in one.  Oh and he was also the subject of a BBC documentary entitled 'The Art World's Prankster'.  Plot.  Thicken.

The scene of the crime is the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, just outside the Cotswolds.  Built in the early 1700's and one of England's largest houses, it is the only non-royal, non-episcopal country house in the country to hold the title of palace.  It is unique in its combined use as a family home, mausoleum and national monument. The palace is notable as the birthplace and ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill and is open to the public 364 days a year.

I often visit Blenheim Palace both in a work capacity and in my free time.  My children love it as there's plenty to do there including a hedge maze that is supposed to take 45 minutes - but my eldest son and I have done it in 15 with my youngest son on my shoulders.  There's a little train, a butterfly house, acres of park and woodland to run about in and often some kind of show or carnival with fun rides, balloons and plenty of sugar.

Blenheim Palace is massive and apart from being the family home of an eccentric millionaire, has also played host to members of the royal family, celebrities, world leaders, heads of state and most recently (whisper it), Donald Trump.  By a bizarre coincidence, the golden toilet in question (entitled, American Dream) was offered to Trump's Whitehouse by the Guggenheim after they initially requested the loan of an original Van Gogh for the Oval Office, which was refused.

The current owner of Blenheim Palace is the 12th Duke of Marlborough, James Spencer Churchill; born in Oxford in 1955, educated at Harrow School, relative of Winston Churchill, Lady Diana Spencer (yes that Lady Diana) and Christina Onassis.  He also goes by the name Jamie Blandford and has had a somewhat chequered past including serving prison time in 1995 for forging prescriptions and then again in 2007 for six months for dangerous driving and criminal damage following a road rage attack.

In a bid to safeguard the Blenheim Palace estate from Jamie's excessive behaviour, his father won a court battle in 1994 to ensure he never won control of the family seat.  However after the father and son relationship improved although still mindful of his son's troubled history, the Duke had insisted the board of trustees should have power of veto should Jamie ever inherit the title and estate.

On the death of his father in 2014, Jamie Blandford, who had a well-publicised drug addiction, inherited his family's residence and is understood to have become a trustee of the companies that run it.   The responsibility of maintaining one of Britain's grandest country houses for future generations had passed to the 58-year-old following a remarkable turnaround in his relationship with his late father, who once described him as the 'black sheep' of his family.  Jamie is now in overall charge of the estate.  

Although open to the public, Blenheim Palace remains a private residence and Jamie can decide what goes on there.  Horse trials, car shows and jousting tournaments are just some of the events that bring hundreds of thousands of visitors to the tiny town of Woodstock each year.  Many artists have been invited to show their work at the palace in recent years to a mixed reception from visitors.  

It is not uncommon to turn up at the Palace to find fluorescent tubes lighting a corridor to a room filled with controversial oil paintings.  When I visited last year with a couple of ladies from the US they commented to one of the curators at the house that they found the works of art on display offensive and had they known the exhibition was on, they would not have visited.  The curator responded by telling them that Jamie was the owner, it was his gaff, and he could do what he wanted with it.  Fair point.

So let's recap; a priceless golden toilet designed by an Italian prankster artist is stolen during a heist straight out of a George Clooney movie from the ancestral home of Winston Churchill, which happens to owned by an eccentric duke with a history of drug abuse and prison time.  No one has been charged, the toilet has not been recovered and the whole thing remains a mystery.   Just another day in the Cotswolds; the Kooky Cotswolds.

LM