I HAVE written a column this week, I'm just not going to show it to you.

I have also sculpted a modern interpretation of Michael Angelo's David out of purple Playdoh; built a 20ft high pyramid made from small boys in my spare room; and have created a video installation entitled Cat On A Hot Tin Roof involving my two moggies, the garden shed and a blow torch. All of which I'm not going to show you either.

I'm not being coy, and I'm certainly not in any way being painfully pretentious. I am simply being an artist. So hand over £24,000 and I'll be on my way.

Call me a heathen if you will, call me a philistine if the whim takes you (believe me, I've been called a heck of a lot worse), but I don't understand most modern art.

And I certainly don't understand why anyone would want to reward it with a £24,000 prize - especially if the artist actually refuses to let the judges see their work.

Which is precisely what one entrant in this year's Beck's Futures competition - second only to the Turner Prize in terms of kudos and cash - has done.

She insists she has created a masterpiece, but she is keeping it to herself, while the judges have to make do with reading a legal document that confirms the piece exists and describes it in minute detail.

As a good gag, I get it. As an ingenious con, I get it. But as art, I just don't get it. Then again, the rest of the shortlist doesn't exactly get my artistic tastebuds all of a tingle either.

Among the other shortlisted nominees, who will share £40,000 of the £64,000 prize pot when the winner is announced at the end of this month, is a performance artist whose back catalogue includes sewing pieces of wood to the soles of his feet.

According to the 28-year-old Glasgow School of Art graduate, whose other works include Carrying A Bucket Of Water Around For A Week and Avoiding Eye Contact For A Seven Day Period, this video nasty is "an experiment to emulate some ancient rites of passage ritual".

If you ask me, however, it's simply a fasttrack method of bagging a bed in the nearest psychiatric hospital. That's if there are any beds available of course - there are plenty of other nominees on the Beck's list who may feel more comfortable if their rooms were decorated with padded wallpaper and their jackets were put on back to front.

Other bizarre entries include a film of debris falling down the side of a block of flats, a vibrating mummy, footage of a Salvation Army jumble sale and, my own personal favourite, a collective known as Inventory who want to stage a football match on The Mall, using Admiralty Arch and Buckingham Palace as goals.

Last year's winner created a dramatic 69ft-long wall painting entitled We Fall Into Patterns Quickly. Eccentric? Undoubtedly, but at least he used paint and didn't choose to spell out his message in cow dung nailed to the brick work.

I understand, of course, that art isn't restricted to painting and sketching and sculpting anymore, and that modern art in particular is more about the process and the message rather than the end product. I just wish the big money prize shows would occasionally include pieces that didn't resemble the contents of a swing bin.

Then again, it does mean that someone who can't draw, paint or sculpt - someone like me for instance - could actually get their hands on £24,000.

Perhaps I'm too late for this year's competition, but I'm already working on my piece for next year. It is a visualisation of existence in a contemporary world wracked by conflict and will be presented in the form of a giant ball of cat hair that is currently in development under my sofa. I call it The Fluff Of Life.

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Updated: 08:57 Tuesday, March 11, 2003