EXCLUSIVEWhy I have a nagging sense that I may be to blame for the £4.8million golden toilet being stolen from Blenheim Palace: GRANT TUCKER LISTEN: The Mail’s unbeatable podcast The Trial of the Golden Toilet is available now, wherever you get your podcasts By GRANT TUCKER ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR Published: 11:48 GMT, 19 March 2025 | Updated: 11:50 GMT, 19 March 2025 ‘Grant - this is all your fault,’ messaged a friend as the news broke that Blenheim Palace’s recently installed 18-carat gold toilet had been stolen. It was 2019, and just weeks earlier I had interviewed the aristocrat who had engineered the exhibition of the luxurious lavatory, which had come all the way from New York’s Guggenheim Museum. It was a conversation that I fear sowed the seeds of the audacious heist that most likely resulted in the melting down of the sculpture, created by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan and valued at £4.8million. Lord Edward Spencer-Churchill, the brother of the Duke of Marlborough, had appeared nonchalant about security at his family seat, pooh-poohing the notion that the 216lb loo might be at risk. ‘It’s not going to be the easiest thing to nick,’ he told me. ‘Firstly, it’s plumbed in and, secondly, a potential thief will have no idea who last used the toilet or what they ate. So no, I don’t plan to be guarding it.’ Three weeks later, Spencer-Churchill’s words came back to haunt him when burglars broke into the 300-year-old palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, taking just three minutes to make off with the artwork. Yesterday the gang behind the smash and grab were at last brought to justice. Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector had offered the work, entitled ‘America’, to President Trump’s White House in 2017, but it proved too gaudy even for him. Visitors to Blenheim were even able to use the fully plumbed loo themselves, provided they forked out a £27 ticket to the house and gardens. (So much for spending a penny!) Blenheim Palace’s 18-carat gold toilet was stolen in 2019 two days after it went on display Indeed, the convicted thief arrived the day before the attack to scout out the priceless convenience himself. Spencer-Churchill, too, admitted he was eagerly anticipating availing himself of the lavatory when he spoke to me. ‘Despite being born with a silver spoon in my mouth I have never had a s*** on a golden toilet, so I look forward to it,’ he said. Blenheim bosses shuttled 20 visitors an hour in strict three-minute time slots, and were expecting the work to be used by nearly 6,000 people at Blenheim in its six-week exhibition. But they barely managed a few hundred in the two days it was displayed before the theft. As the judge pointed out - to general hilarity - in his summing up, this was no ‘bog standard’ heist. Theories quickly spread throughout the art world that it was some sort of Banksy-esque publicity stunt. Cattelan, who was honoured at a party in the palace the night before the theft, made a name for himself in 1996 when he stole the entire contents of another gallery for his own show in Amsterdam. Following a trial at Oxford Crown Court, Michael Jones, 39, left, was found guilty of burglary while Fred Doe, right, was convicted of trying to sell the stolen gold Blenheim Palace swiftly turned the crime scene into a tourist attraction, allowing thousands of visitors to take photographs of the hole left in the floor and the splintered wood panels The Trial of the Golden Toilet Advertisement Internet jokers had responded to the news of the lavatory’s theft with the hoary old quip that the police had ‘nothing to go on’. But any impulse to laugh on my part was stifled by a nagging sense I was somehow responsible – a feeling exacerbated when Dominic Hare, Blenheim Palace’s chief executive, issued a statement alluding to my interview with Spencer-Churchill: ‘They were light-hearted comments which I imagine Edward is wishing he had not said.’ Given there was very little chance that the artwork would ever be returned to the Guggenheim (indeed, it has never been found), I feared my reporting could have done lasting damage to international cooperation in the art world. Blenheim Palace, meanwhile, swiftly turned the crime scene into a tourist attraction, allowing thousands of visitors, lured by fine weather and publicity generated by the crime, to take photographs of the hole left in the floor and the splintered wood panels. Even the artist got in on the act. ‘When this morning I was informed about the robbery I thought it was a prank,’ said Cattelan. ‘I always liked heist movies and finally I’m in one of them. Are the thieves of this work the real artists? From the speed the robbery was executed we can say for sure they are great performers.’ Whatever its merits, the thieves’ performance is likely now to end with them serving hefty prison sentences. As for me, I’ll do my best to avoid pointing crooks in the direction of unguarded loot in the future. And perhaps the Spencer-Churchills will pay more attention to security throughout their sprawling family estate – even when it comes to the smallest room in the house. Golden Toilet Share or comment on this article: Why I have a nagging sense that I may be to blame for the £4.8million golden toilet being stolen from Blenheim Palace: GRANT TUCKER Add comment