What is Bill doing? Making soup for the UK.
Bill Drummond has been involved in a number of what he himself calls “reckless schemes”. In 1992, at the height of his pop fame with the KLF, he and his partner, Jimi Cauty, exited the music business by “machine-gunning” the audience at the Brit awards with blanks, causing the composer Georg Solti to flee in terror. Two years later, as avant-pranksters the K Foundation, the duo burned £1m on the Hebridean isle of Jura. Drummond’s latest wheeze, however, is arguably his most surreal. He is visiting complete strangers and making soup for them.
It started like this: in May 1998, Drummond, whose culinary training consists of watching his mum in the kitchen, made soup for a “rabble of people” in a house in Botanic Avenue, Belfast. In January 2003, he made soup for some folk in Ewart Road, Nottingham. Then, in June last year, he took a map of the British Isles and drew a line across it, so it cut through Belfast and Nottingham and ended up at Ipswich. Drummond’s promotional flyers explain: “He made it known that anybody living on this Soup Line was welcome to invite him to their home to make soup for their family and friends. If asked why, Bill Drummond is likely to answer, ‘Because it is a friendly thing to do.'”
Details on the project are at Penkiln Burn. To ask Bill Drummond to visit your home to make soup, email soupline@penkilnburn.com.