The 24-hour city is already a reality for art-lover Lou Reed.

Reed was dining with a friend - the Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein - on Sunday night, when he decided he wanted to see Helnwein's new show at the Robert Sandelson Gallery.

"I had just taken to my bed when I got a phone call from Gottfried", says Sandelson. "But I'm an old fan of Lou Reed so I went as I was and opened up at midnight." For nearly an hour, Sandelson stood in his nightwear and "yawned away while they analysed the pictures in detail".

Afterwards, he drove Reed back to his hotel where, the star explained, he was looking forward to doing tai chi exercises on the balcony at dawn.

May 11, 2000
The Shock of the Real
John Hendry
A year or so back, an exhibition called Sensations caused a few upsets, first in London and then in New York. Central to the reaction was a large-scale portrait of a child-killer assembled from, if I remember correctly, the palm prints of children. So far, so bland. The shock element in art has been much talked about in the last five years but art that actually shocks has been thin on the ground during the same period. Step forward then, Gottfried Helnwein.

John Hendry about Gottfried Helnwein at the Sandelson Gallery in London