IS THIS an offer too good to refuse even for Sir Nicholas Serota, the head of the Tate Gallery?

The Stuckist group of artists has written to offer him 100 paintings worth £250,000. The offer comes after gifts last year from artists such as Antony Gormley, Sir Peter Blake and Anish Kapoor.

The Stuckist movement, formed in 1999 to rival Brit Art, takes its name from an insult by Tracy Emin, who told co-founder Billy Childish that his art was "stuck".

The omens for the Stuckists are not good. Charles Saatchi has claimed that Serota last year rejected an offer of his entire modern art collection, worth £200 million.

The works offered to Serota are being shown in the Punk Victorian exhibition at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool. Not one Stuckist work hangs in any of the Tate's four galleries. Charles Thomson, co-founder of the movement, said: "This is a unique opportunity for the Tate to acquire free the major works behind the renaissance of painting in British art.

"Refusing a place for the Stuckists can mean only one thing: the Tate wants to be out of step with the move away from shock and gimmick and towards authenticity."

Sir Nicholas?

Extra special help for Minghella

TO THE palatial dining room of the Middle Temple for a Valentine's Day poetry recital with Alan Rickman, Adrian Lester, Jerry Hall, Simon Callow, Imogen Stubbs, Patricia Hodge and Juliet Stevenson. There was also an auction for the Avron Foundation, which helps people's writing skills. It was for a walk-on role and and a day on the set of the Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghelle's next fill Breaking and Entering.

Bidding was fast and furious but when it reached £6,000 it emerged that the two bidders were Callow and Hall, who were enjoying the wheeze hugely. When they retired, bidding resumed for the day out with Minghella, the patron of the foundation, and reached £2,000 ... from a real bidder.

His name is on job

Desperate measures. Despite being the home town of William Hague, the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham has always been a Labour stronghold. However, local Tories hope that civid pride might lead to voters opting for their candidate, who is called Rotherham, Candidate Dr Lee Rotherham admist to having no connection with the town apart from the name.

PS...

• Leonardo DiCaprio has discovered that going incognito can have its downside. " I went to a supermarket with my cap and glasses on. I was on the cover of a magazine," says the star of The Aviator. " I was behind a woman at the counter who was looking at the magazines. She said: 'There he is again, that Leonardo DiCaprio. Don't you wish he'd just disappear?'"

• Liam Neeson, star of Kinsey, has always had a gift for a simile. Why does he act?" The more you go into, the more it nurtures you," he told Varsity. "It's invigorating. But I don't analyse too much. It's like a dog smelling where it's going to do its toilet in the morning."

• Legendary rock band Led Zepplin finally won a lifetime achievement award at the Grammy's on Sunday. But while the guitarist Jimmy Page and the bassist John Paul Jones turned up, singer Robert Plant was apparently so busy on tour he had to send a video message. "It wouldn't have taken much just to pop over here and meet everybody, would it really?" grumbled Page.

• Not somuch the case of like mother, like daughter, where Vogue Editor Anna Wintour and her daughter Bee are concerned. Bee is asked in Tatler is she likes to shop. "No. I love clothes, but changing all the time is a real hassle." Must be such a drag changing in and out of Chanel and Gucci.

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