Gallery: Dom Joly as an artist in Paris

Okay, so you aren’t quite as cruel as we gave you credit for. Having dipped Dom in severely chilled white water in the Spanish Pyrenees, you let him stay warm and dry this week. Hell, you even gave him the chance to earn some money on the streets of Paris.

But that doesn’t mean you’ve gone soft. Far from it. Fifty-four percent of you voted for our shameless blagger to enter the world of the tortured artiste in the French capital. The challenge? To pass himself off as a portrait painter on the cobbles of Montmartre.

Having acquired a blue beret and the prime pitch on Place du Tertre, Dom placed a somewhat ambitious valuation on his work: “I’ll start small, maybe 100, and raise it after lunch.”

A slow start saw the fee cut — “Get your half-price portraits here” — then dropped altogether, in what he labelled his Free Experimental Period. When business remained slow, our man tried a radical change of tack. “Maybe I should be more French. Go Away. Leave Me Alone.”

Voilà! Dom was besieged, and immediately displayed his passionate creative temperament: “Art is in the soul. It’s about torture. That’s why I’m so good at it.”

That wasn’t a total lie. While the other Toulouse-Lautrecs in the square remained underemployed, he was pulling in the customers with work that paid scant regard to the usual style of ludicrously flattering portraits.

In fact, Dom had quickly entered his surrealist period. A teenager in a bright-green anorak sat hopefully for minutes, only to recoil at the finished work — a blank canvas scrawled with the cryptic plea “HELP! I AM PRISONER”. Another woman was shocked to find herself immortalised as an apple. She refused to pay a 100 fee, and when Dom asked her to hand over her valuation, gave 20 cents.

Not that it mattered. He was working up a head of steam — low- value, mass-production art. “I paint these people in minutes. It’s fast art. It’s McArt. It’s the future.”

Dom’s popularity was intimidating the established artists. One was threatening to call the police because the newcomer was hassling passers-by. “He’s just jealous,” said Dom. “I’ve seen his stuff. It’s rubbish.”

Tension was growing and Dom was walking the fine line between genius and disaster. He dallied with the idea of wearing a croissant on his head to underline his surrealist credentials, and displayed an arrogance bordering on cruelty with a female client: “She was ugly. I can only paint what I see.”

It couldn’t last. When he moved into his cubist period, drawing square stick figures alongside the words “Jesus Christ”, the end was in sight. A few more portraits, a contemplative Pernod and he retired from the fray. Not to the predictable cold garret, but to the opulent splendour of the George V hotel. How subversive. How radical. How very Parisian.

TRAVEL INFORMATION

To follow in Dom’s brush strokes, head for the Place du Tertre, in Montmartre. Get there with Eurostar (0870 518 6186, www.eurostar.com), which has returns from Waterloo to Gare du Nord from £59, with fastest journey times of 2hr 35min. Alternatively, there are flights to Paris from 20 UK and Irish airports.

Dom stayed in style at the Four Seasons George V (31 Avenue George V; 00 800 6488 6488, www.fourseasons.com), where sumptuous doubles start at £480. Its acclaimed Le Cinq restaurant — a true gourmand’s choice — boasts three Michelin stars and an epic cellar.

A cheaper option is the theatrical Hôtel Royal Fromentin (00 33 1 48 74 85 93, www.hotelroyalfromentin.com; doubles from £101), near Montmartre.

For more information, visit www.parisinfo.com or www.franceguide.com.

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