Voting Station

Sebastian Horsley

Please vote to return to collections.

Artist

The Resume

    (August 8, 1962-June 17, 2010)
    Born in Hull, England, United Kingdom
    Birth name was Marcus A. Horsley
    British dandy, artist and author
    Best known for undergoing crucifixion in the Philippines (2000), which was documented in photos and a film and inspired a series of his paintings
    Wrote the memoirs 'A Dandy in the Underworld' (2007)
    Died at 47 of a heroin overdose

Why he might be annoying:

    He was thrown out of St. Martin's School of Art for forging a document to win a grant.
    He claimed to have slept with over a thousand prostitutes and to have worked as a prostitute himself.
    He said he preferred sex with prostitutes because, 'What I hate with women generally is the intimacy.'
    He claimed that he and his wife Evelynn both slept with gangster/artist Jimmy Boyle, who served as best man at their wedding.
    He wrote an advice column for 'The Observer' that was cancelled after four months due to reader complaints about his graphic descriptions of oral and anal sex.
    He said, 'One jolly year I spent over 100,000 pounds on crack.'
    He was banned from entering the US on grounds of 'moral turpitude.' (2008)
    He slept with a pistol next to his bed because he might accidentally shoot himself by picking it up instead of the phone.
    In his 40s he declared, 'If I had known I was going to live this long, I wouldn't have taken such care of myself.'

Why he might not be annoying:

    His mother said of his childhood, 'I don't think [his father] ever went to bed sober and I was always in a fog.... Though it seems shocking to admit, I drank all the way through my pregnancies.'
    He was a Marc Bolan fan and named his memoirs after a T. Rex album.
    'The Guardian' called his autobiography 'as memorable and witty a confessional since Quentin Crisp last put barbed pen to paper.'
    He quipped about his Soho meighborhood, 'The air used to be clean and the sex used to be dirty. Now it is the other way around.'
    His friend and fellow artist Simon Tyszko said, 'Despite everything, he was essentially a kind, funny man.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 7 Votes: 85.71% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 4 Votes: 75.00% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 19 Votes: 68.42% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 5 Votes: 80.0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 18 Votes: 55.56% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 10 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 17 Votes: 64.71% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 5 Votes: 80.0% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 23 Votes: 86.96% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 22 Votes: 59.09% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 24 Votes: 58.33% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 16 Votes: 75.00% Annoying
    In 2011, Out of 47 Votes: 44.68% Annoying
    In 2010, Out of 118 Votes: 63.56% Annoying