The Fifth Plinth on Oxford Street: Live coverage!

Over the next twenty four hours I'm going to be reporting from the Fifth Plinth, which has been mentioned by Sebastian Faulks in today's Independent.

9am: Our first act is an out-of-work accountant who finds himself competing against hundreds of other job applicants:



Those walking purposefully down the street may glance inside, pause a moment, then carry on. Others stop to look; they're surprised, seeing something they hadn't expected.



A young French tourist asks me "Do you know where is a supermarket?" Then there's a pause. "And do you know where I can find sex shop?"

Our next performance seems to involve a lady drawing circles on the wall. Note my crafty plug:



By now a crowd's gathered:



1pm: Sky Arts have just arrived. They're filming us for a programme on Anthony Gormley's Fourth Plinth. The The Mad Hatter's Rambling Tea-Party at Lunchtime is about to begin.

2pm: The tea party:



The out-of-work accountant is enjoying himself:



Passers-by are given cakes:



And, if they like, tea:







3pm: While a colleague talks outside, Melissa from Home Start International spends an hour entertaining her two young children, to demonstrate the difficulties of parenting and promote her charity:



I'm taking a break now to cycle across London to seek advice on Tuesday's eviction hearing. I'll be back in a couple of hours. Rather frighteningly, we've another 19 hours to go.

6:30pm: The space is now being used for a "TEFL TASTIC" class by Lee Campbell, who used to teach in this very building. He holds up questions for the crowd, mouths advice, and passes them paper through the letterbox to write their answers, undeterred by the Euro-Disco booming out of the shop next door.





8:30: The Rambling Restaurant are having a banquet. These guys are so cool:













I've just been chatting to an Iranian man who supplies clothes to the shop downstairs. He came to London after the Iranian revolution and for a time squatted in Harrow. They didn't think of themselves as squatters; they just needed somewhere to stay." He gave us some legal advice: "What you do is, two days before the court, you tell them you are ill. And then you get another week." Not wanting to puncture the mood of macho conviviliaty, I didn't tell him I doubted the judge would be convinced by us persons unknown claiming illnesses unknown.

He said "I've got four houses now, all paid for. I rent them out. but I'm on your side. These guys in the shop, they pay £12,000 rent a week. So you come here, you stay even one day, the owner, it kills him. He don't need the rent, he's got £20 million in the bank."

"Well," I say, " we've been here three weeks"
"He's dead!"

I asked him what would happen if we tried this in Iran.

"What would happen, the owner comes round with twenty five men, they have sticks, they tell you to get out, they give you half hour. So you get out. Or they cut you in half."

10pm: The Rambling Restaurant crowd are in one of the rooms:



We've just had a performance by the RD Youth-Led Theatre Co:



Just as they're finishing I see Dan helping the next act carrying a drum kit and amplifier into the building. I see one of the guys is wearing a Danzig t-shirt, and two guys are outside setting up guitars. They're wearing spandex trousers and I'm worried:



I stop Dan: "Hey, these are the Trafalgar Square guys. The ones we said we were going to cancel because they'd be too loud."

Dan: "Oh shit!"

And you know what? They're awesome, and totally fit the changed atmosphere of Oxford Street, with the people on the street now being a Friday night crowd. And, to be honest, they weren't that loud.



Then the camera battery tragically died and I don't have the charger. So I don't have photos of the guitarists doing the splits, roaming around the pavement, or one flat on the floor when someone pours beer on his head, or the gruff vocalist with his angry hobo beard, or the crowd of fifty, or the girls from the Rambling Restaurant dancing the can-can; or the nervous moment when a police car drives past and my relief when it passes. Someone else's pics here however.

1am: There's a performance by guys from the Camden Circus. A camera crew from Tiger Aspect film them for Channel 4. But three of my Mayfair housemates arrived and I went with them to the nearby VHS Video Basement, where twenty people were sitting in the front room drinking, talking, making animals out of clay, and playing Sega Megadrive.

A drunken, morose Peruvian man with little English spent a long while talking to us when we got back, while on the plinth a bare-chested artist called Hubert was painting with oils. Nightgoers on the way somewhere else would pause, look for a moment, then continue their journey.

I got talking to a young guy standing by his brakeless fixie. After a few minutes he said "I think I know who you are. You're LuckyJimm." He'd been reading my blog for a year, he said, and had just left his job as a bar manager to become a cycle courier. I told him it was always slightly embarassing meeting people who read my blog, since they already knew the worst about me while I knew nothing about them. But it was wonderful if, knowing everything, they still liked me.

3.30am: Hubert is painting another picture, the intensity of the artist's study recreated in an unexpected time and place. Ray is on the street asking disinterested passers-by to listen to a poem. Dan, responsible for most of the work organising this day, is asleep on a chair. I go to bed soon afterwards, meaning that 4am-8am are dead hours, with the curtains drawn and the plinth empty.

8am: Our final performance is by the acoustic band Their Hearts Were Full of Spring. We quickly remove the paints and brushes from the plinth. They crowd into the small space and start to play. They're a decent volume from their side of the glass door, but when I go out onto the street I can't hear them at all. The sunshine means I can't really see them either. I think they should play on the street; but over the road, there's a man cutting up paving stones. They continue their performance inside, quiet and unnoticed.

I hope we win an adjournment in court on Tuesday. The last 24 hours have been incredible, and we really ought to do it all again next week...