"Planning decisions are notoriously slow, but the one that has just been taken about what to put on the empty plinth in London's Trafalgar Squre may be a record. Aside from a few temporary exhibits, the plinth has been empty for 163 years. It was built for a statue of King William IV that was never cast because the money ran out; ever since it has bought jobs to newspaper columnists short of inspiration and to radio phone-in producers with a slack hour to fill. Traditionalists have spluttered with outrage at radical suggestions such as a car covered with pigeon-droppins; trendies gag at the fogeys' campaign to stick the Queen Mother up there.

With Ken Livingstone as mayor of London, the traditionalists did not stand a chance. A man keen to keep his radical credentials polished, the mayor appointed a committee to decide what to put on the plinth. On March 15th, it announced its choice: 'Alison Lapper Pregnant', a sculpture of a naked, pregnant disabled woman, will occupy the space for 15 months.

The sculptor, Marc Quinn, is a fashionable protege of Charles Saatchi, a London art collector; he is best-known for a self-portrait in his own, frozen, blood. His piece for the plinth mimics classical sculpture, thus implicitly criticising the image of bodily perfection purveyed by traditionalists.

But Trafalgar Square is a difficult place to argue that disabled people have been ignored by mainstream sculpture. Ms Lapper will be looking up to the most famous cripple in British history, the one-eyed, one-armed victor of the Battle of Trafalgar. Last laugh to the traditionalists, then" (Public Sculpture, The Economist, March 20, 2004).