Trafalgar Square plinth breaks barrier of a million shouts of "Prick!"

It happened at 3:29 this morning. Derek Combes, a video clerk from Hounslow who had been on the lash in celebration of his friend's eleventh divorce in six years, was walking through Trafalgar Square. Up on the plinth was Eric Potter, an amateur magician from Rickmansworth as part of the 'Aren't Common People Interesting Too?' installation by Anthony Gormley. Eric's allotted hour had not been going well. The doves he had intended to release had already been eaten by the pigeons and his card trick had been a failure due someone taking fifteen minutes to overcome the twenty foot drop between the plinth and the ground to "take a card, any card."

It was at this point that Combes made his own inadvertent piece of history. Casually walking by he happened to look up and see Potter's attempts to make a hat disappear. The botched job meant that the only missing item was Potter's dignity. Expressing his contempt for the entire operation, Combes emitted the millionth "Prick!" delivered at the performers on the plinth. To mark this piece of history, a firework display was unleashed and a thousand doves took to the sky to spell out PRICK in synchronised formation.

Chief curator of the installation, Michael Billingham, was delighted to have reached the million prick mark. "We've had a phenomenal response from the general public. They've been really imaginative with their choice of insults. We had four thousand 'arseholes' on the first day alone, we're about to cross the one hundred thousand 'twat' line and it's been another bumper day for 'turdlicker'."