Outsider Art

Not since the angel with the fiery sword told Adam and Eve that if their names weren't on the list they weren't coming in has humanity so strained with fury at the injustice of an exclusion.

It seems that Gordon Brown has been refused admission to the cool kids' table. President Obama's dance list was mysteriously full every time that Gordon's party planners suggested a Terpsichorean tryst. If it were a Jane Austen adaptation he would be hiding his face behind a fan and hissing to his sisters at this very minute.

According to FT.com, a spokeswoman has been attempting to play down what lesser news outlets are describing as a snub. "She argued that the two were talking informally all the time – including a short encounter in the kitchens of the United Nations in New York."

Let's script that out shall we?

Obama: "While I'm here can I get a club sandwich?"

Brown: "Mr. President, it's Gordon!"

Obama: "My error ... can I get a club sandwich, Gordon?"

Sordel's amusement at this serious insult that our leader has suffered at the hands of the Rebels (surely the most vexing since the Boston Tea Party) is not unmixed, however, with fellow feeling. I was myself excluded this week: from the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy.

Now, it must be acknowledged before I go any further that the exhibition had not, in fact, opened yet, but it was nevertheless galling to be forced to gaze impotently through the glass at corridors that will soon be thronged with milling culture vultures. By the time I am able to form an opinion on this particular exhibition the expiry date for such an opinion will doubtless have passed and I will be left bewildered by discussion of the next artistic sensation.

It was not an entirely wasted journey, however.

For those of us unable to pass the gate, the Royal Academy has provided a very large courtyard sculpture that is best described as a Fizzy Drink. Shiny polished spheres (something of a stock in trade to which Kapoor resorts for his more obviously institutional artworks) effervesce upwards in a loose column, providing reflections of the surrounding buildings and one another.

As a consequence, those of us unable to enter the exhibition were forced to contemplate our own bleak physiognomies peering back at us.

It would be nice to think that Mrs. Brown's little boy will also use his time in the wilderness to indulge in a little self-reflection. In a crowd of little versions of himself he might at last find some friends.