Sex through the window in Soho

John and Yoko did it for peace and love - but that was in the idealistic Sixties.

Today, 33 years after the original "bed-in", a couple will spend a week between the sheets in the window of a Soho gallery to put sex on show - and make money.

Liam Yeates, 31, specialises in using people in artistic installations. This time he is using Max Whatley, 24, and Meg Zakreta, 22, in The Art Of Sex, no doubt in a bid to eclipse Tracey Emin's notorious work, My Bed. Yeates said: "I want people to think about the safe-sex message, which is why we have a condom machine on the wall." He is also hoping to sell the plywood and red-felt bedroom for £18,000.

Apart from trips away to wash, eat and perform other bodily functions, the naked pair will be confined to their scarlet cell for a week at the Blink gallery.

Miss Zakreta, a nanny, and Mr Whatley, an estate agent, are being paid an undisclosed sum to become "live art", and have taken a week off from their jobs. But they haven't told their bosses what it is they are doing. "I'll either get a whole lot of grief - or my P45. But we're going to have fun," Mr Whatley said during the trial run, adding: "We are thinking of moving in together - this will be the ultimate test of our relationship."

Yeates said: "I want to provoke the kind of voyeurism that hooked people to Big Brother - except this time there will be sex."

However, when the couple make love they will draw a curtain to keep within the law.

The artist added: "I really wanted this to happen in Soho because of the traditional seediness of the area - I want to challenge Britain's stuffy attitudes to sex. It's a love-in for the new millennium." But as he spoke two elderly women passed the window, looked in - and walked on without a break in their conversation. So much for sensation.