• From April 20, 2005

The curator of Kingston’s Toilet Gallery locked himself inside the converted toilet block for a week as an experiment into the creative process.

During his solitary stay inside the Clarence Street gallery, Paul Stafford slept in a hammock as a precaution against rats.

Food was passed to him through a hatch and he had only a chemical toilet and a microwave for company.

Visitors brought objects to the gallery to be passed on to Mr Stafford and catalogued.

They included a charcoal sketch of two dogs, drawn in a PoW camp in World War Two, originally created to exchange for cigarettes.

Mr Stafford had several so-called luxury objects, including 12 bangers brought from France by his son, Joseph, battery- operated glasses for reading in the dark, an old radio, plus paints and paper.

He planned to fill 100 tin cans with drawings or objects, before welding them shut and labelling them with Izal toilet paper.

When visited by the Surrey Comet he said: “I will be publishing a downloadable web book of my experiences, which will also be in the form of a video diary.

“While in here I want to get to the heart of creativity, which is not always a comfortable place to be. But I hope to discover calming-down techniques to get through it.”

Mr Stafford, who had wanted to carry out the project for some 18 months, said he wanted to pare down the creative process to its basic elements.

He added: “I have been churning through things about the past and doing lots of writing.

“It is very noisy in here, a cacophony of awfulness from the youngsters fighting and messing about outside until the early hours.”

The Toilet Gallery, which measured 6m by 12m, was originally a 1950s loo.

  • 50 YEARS AGO: April 21, 1965

A freak mix of weather caused thousands of pounds-worth of damage and a two-mile traffic jam this week 50 years ago. A summery Good Friday was followed by near-whirlwind gales the following day, which uprooted trees and capsized boats.

  • 25 YEARS AGO: April 20, 1990

A Tiffin schoolboy was among the lucky ones to have been picked from more than 2,000 young hopefuls for a show at the Edinburgh festival. But first, Mark Ayres, 12, had to raise £500 to pay for his expenses to realise his long-held ambition.

  • 10 YEARS AGO: April 20, 2005

Actor Art Malik opened an artists’ centre in Kingston designed to house up to 20 creatives. The Fusion Arts centre in Eden Street opened 10 years ago this week and also offered space for Kingston University MA students.