The only natural progression from here is trying to bring down Nestle by throwing formaldehyde-filled sharks at it. That is because, in my most recent adventure, I wasn’t just watching protest art, or even making it, I WAS protest art.

You may or may not have heard about the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, the empty one. Or at least, it was empty, until Anthony ‘Angel of the North’ Gormley decided it would be a brilliant idea to fill it with 2400 random people whose names were drawn out of a hat, or a computer, or a computerised hat – one an hour, every hour, for a hundred days.

The first I heard about this project was the official email doing the rounds at work; ‘come and stand on the Fourth Plinth for an hour to help create a portrait of Britain’ it said. Just stand. Nothing more. Standing can sometimes be a problem for me, and standing still particularly, but I thought I’d stretch my abilities to the limit and enter the draw along with everybody else. But it didn’t take long, from the first person taking to the Plinth, for the project to change from something I didn’t really mind doing into something I have nightmares about. And by the time Wombles, one man bands and dancing queens had transformed the Plinth from ‘a portrait of Britain’ to ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ it was far too late for me to back out of it without feeling like I’d be wasting a valuable opportunity.

I’m not a performer, I don’t have an act, and there’s very little in my personal skillset that could be made into a stage show of any kind, despite having the wardrobe of a stripper clown. So I decided to spend the hour doing something as Rainbow Warriorish as possible, even though it wouldn’t be much to look at.

What I did, in the end, would have been a pretty decent amount of work for an hour in the office, let alone an hour on top of a rock in the middle of London.

I wrote a column for Tin Can (*ahem* www.tincan.tv) about Bradford Council trying to demolish the Odeon building. It’s called Open Letter to the Muppet Show, and it’s the first time I’ve ever sworn at an entire public body in one go. I’d recommend it, it’s therapeutic. The reason I wanted to do this, long story short, is that the Odeon cinema – previously a Victorian dance hall – has been under threat since the Council first asked us what we wanted to do with it in the grand redevelopment plan. Yes, that would be the same redevelopment that’s left a hole in the city centre for five years so far with no sign of anything actually being built, and the same thing that sparked the undercover graffiti protest I wrote about in one of the previous issues.

We said we wanted to keep the Odeon, and we’ve been saying that ever since we were first consulted; we’ve protested, voted, turned up to hug it, started campaigns, formed groups and produced a newspaper, but the Council are as intent on knocking it down as they would be if they were getting back-handers for the land or something crazy like that. At first, I just wanted them to turn it into a venue, that was my only preference, but now I’m so shocked at the dodgy handling of so many people’s feelings, so much money, and such a supposedly democratic process that I honestly don’t care what they put in it as long as they save it. And the building they want to replace it with – some soulless glass brick that will make the place look like Manchester – will look stupid next to the Alhambra theatre, which was built to fit in with the Odeon in the first place.

The same thing happened to the city in the 60s, which is why where Leeds has a lovely old market, Bradford has a massive dirty grey concrete monster called The Kirkgate Centre. You’d think they’d have learned, but in the same summer we become UNESCO’s International City of Film, we’re fighting to save a beautiful old cinema that was bought with public money, that we technically own, that is one of the only unique historial buildings we’ve still got that has any character at all.

I love Bradford, but I hate Bradford Council, and if the most recent planning application to knock the building down goes through, there’ll be some interesting scenes in the city centre that will be well worth watching, and some fun to be had until the very last second.