IT STRIKES me as a bit of a nuisance but it might just be a work of art. The bedroom light has a way of turning on sometimes and not at others. Occasionally the switch at the bottom of the stairs won't work where the one upstairs in the bedroom itself will.

It's all very puzzling and I probably need an electrician. Either that or I could invite the organisers of the Turner Prize round to have a look.

While I flicked the switch the judges could stand in darkness and marvel at the way the light either comes on or does not.

The variable illumination can be a bother, especially in dark December. It turns getting up or going to bed into a luminary lottery.

But it's my own work of art, and I'm very proud of it. I call it the Random Lightness Of Being Kept In The Dark.

I would grudgingly explain it all to the judges. Modern artists like myself don't like to "make art" or "make statements" about art.

But if pushed, I would wearily point out that the inconstant luminosity was a statement about the haphazard nature of life, about how the world could be either light or dark.

The light coming on, I would add with a sigh, indicates the glow of creation while the unresponsive 'dark light' stands for the fate that awaits us all. While I was about it, I would explain away the pile of skimmed newspapers and half read books beside the bed as an artistic installation about wasted words.

Those among you who are, well, switched on and off to these things will realise that these thoughts have been summoned by this year's Turner Prize, in which the first prize went to Martin Creed for his exhibit, Wonky Light-bulb. It wasn't actually called that. No, the proper title was Lights Going On And Off.

Take one empty room and a couple of big lights. Turn them on and turn them off. Martin Creed did just this and won the Turner Prize worth £20,000. Apparently, Martin Creed isn't keen on art as most people understand it because the world is too full of the stuff.

This could open a useful new way to write newspaper columns, leaving the space blank because there were too many words, too many opinions in the world already.

Normally I don't hold with knocking modern artists for their pickled sheep, unmade beds and neat rows of bricks.

It's too easy to be a philistine and to blow the dust off the handy, all-purpose "my three year old could do that" article which has been passed down among generations of columnists who know nothing about modern art but do know what they don't like.

Yet there is something about Creed's minimalist work which makes me wonder. Could this be some elaborate joke, an enormous raspberry to an art world which is too blind to see what isn't there and gives a sackful of prize money to an exhibit which is clearly bonkers, taking the mick or both?

I particularly liked one detail in all this. The judges took five hours before coming to their "unanimous" decision. This summons up a picture of these sombre sheriffs standing in an empty room while one of them flicked the switch on and off.

They must have needed the aspirins after five hours of that. As to the light in our bedroom, we'll get round to fixing it one day. In the meantime if you see a skylight window in the Groves alternately lighting up and going dark, don't worry. It's just a work of art.