Paul Katowski

Paul Katowski was Toyah Battersby's art tutor at Weatherfield College. She had been set a task to come up with a piece for a Visual Arts Project and was stuck for an idea. Having recently moved into the salon flat, Les Battersby had thoughtfully donated his manky old armchair for her as a piece of furniture. Perhaps subconsciously taking inspiration from the likes of Tracy Emin, Toyah was suddenly struck by the idea of having Les's Chair as her submission as it would demonstrate that, "your world-class skiver spends all his life boozing, smoking and snoring, all in that one square metre!" Paul came round to the flat to see Toyah's piece and at first was unconvinced but she waxed eloquently about what the chair represented and he also came up with a name that described its meaning in one pithy phrase – "slob culture".

Toyah was delighted to hear that the chair would be on show in an art exhibition. When the event took place a week later Paul showed VIP Councillor Naysmith round the pieces, describing an ordinary shower as showing, "the futility of our lives, dripping away with time. It speaks volumes about the human condition. It's elemental yet elegiac." Naysmith's attitude towards the exhibits was world's apart from Paul's, nevertheless he was more impressed by the chair (despite Paul's description of it as, "'a classic example of post-modern plebian ennui"), especially when Toyah told him that it demonstrated the decline of the working-classes from the days of DH Lawrence, community living and self-improvement to today's empty underclass. This resonated with the self-made Naysmith who quoted from Nye Bevin and praised the piece. It subsequently won the first prize of £500 in the exhibition.

List of appearances

 * Episode 5336 (9th September 2002)
 * Episode 5341 (16th September 2002)