Frieze Week: Digby’s Diary

Monday, 13 October

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There’s something weird in the London air, and it’s not the rain. E-mails from PRs are hitting my inbox like the salvo from a battery of Gatling guns, and I’ve already bumped into one art critic on the point of nervous collapse.

‘Just. Don’t,’ she shot at me when I asked her about all the launch parties I wasn’t invited to.

So here we are: on the verge of Frieze, waiting for the ice to break. By the end of tomorrow, art dealers, PRs and journalists will be running screaming through the streets of central London, from Regent’s Park to the river. Gossip will become stronger currency than the Swiss franc.

Complain all you want about Frieze and its satellite fairs – and believe me, I will – but we love it all really. For us art world parasites, it’s the one time of the year when anyone bothers to suck up to us. And we like being sucked up to. We like it a lot.

I will be attending as many events as humanly possible and writing up my dim memories on the Muse Room, negotiating a path through the good, the bad and the downright rubbish. This is sheer folly. But blimey am I looking forward to it.

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