Ken faces £195,000 plinth bill

Ken Livingstone has been forced to bail out his controversial Trafalgar Square fourth plinth sculpture of a pregnant disabled artist to the tune of £195,000.

Despite a six-month search, the Mayor has yet to find a sponsor for the white marble figure due to be installed on the plinth next spring.

With time running out and work on the statue not yet begun, it will now be paid for out of public funds. But it is understood that when its time on the plinth runs out it will revert to artist Marc Quinn, who could then sell it on.

The design for the statue, picked by a committee appointed by the Mayor at a cost of £80,000 a year, shows Quinn's friend, the disabled artist Alison Lapper, when heavily pregnant. An Evening Standard poll found 70 per cent of Londoners did not want to see any of the chosen works on display in the square.