In 1996, cow-bisecting art superstar Damien Hirst entertained the Observer, greeting the journalist at the door draped in a towel. ‘I like taking my clothes off,’ he said later. An encounter with Hirst was something approached with trepidation: there were reports of ‘challenging’ behaviour; he had filled a Sunday Times interviewer’s handbag with flies; there had been some ‘unpleasantness’ involving a rat, a rubber glove and an art critic. Brian Sewell advised against shaking his hand: ‘limp, damp and unpleasant’.
