Mick Hartley

Twenty five years ago, Andy Warhol came to Britain for the last time in a blur of Concorde engines, flashbulbs and oddly attired hangers-on.

It was like an art world state visit with crowds of star-struck British acolytes fighting to get into the small Anthony d’Offay gallery in London where Warhol was exhibiting a collection of new self-portraits.

In the general delirium the future Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, then a 19-year-old art history student, had his life changed forever when Warhol fondled him at the Ritz.

Warhol was Deller’s hero. “The fact that he was coming to London was unbelievable….I felt ‘I just have to go to this’.” He managed to bluff his way into the heaving private view for the show, on July 8, 1986, dressed in his striped school blazer and a council worker’s baseball cap.

Inside he persuaded Warhol to autograph his cap. Then Christopher Makos, the photographer who was one of Warhol’s chief lieutenants, suggested to an astonished Deller that he visit them at the Ritz.

The next day Deller went to the hotel but lost his nerve. He fled when the director of the Ritz glared at him for failing to stand up as the Queen Mother passed through the lobby. By the time the art student got home Makos had rung his parents to invite him back.

Deller took a friend because he was “slightly concerned” about what he was letting himself in for. Summoned up to Room 321 they found themselves giggling, wondering what was waiting for them inside. Then they knocked.

“The door opens and there’s a bunch of people sitting round watching TV,” Deller said. “They were watching Benny Hill with the sound turned down, listening to a Roxy Music album. It was like walking into an art installation. We spent the next two hours with them, playing around. We were like the entertainment.” One particular memory stands out: very casually Warhol placed his hand on Deller’s groin.

“He did an expert grope,” Deller said. “Totally unexpected. I’m not gay but I took this as a massive compliment.” Rather than feeling that he had been abused, Deller thought that the encounter was “the most amazing thing that ever happened to me, and actually, still is in some respects”.

He said: “It made me totally reassess what I wanted to do with my life.” He decided to make his own art and 18 years later became one of the most popular winners of the Turner Prize, showing work that included a series of spider diagrams made directly on the walls of Tate Britain illustrating the connections between aspects of recent British history including the miners’ strike, brass bands and acid house music. He is now a trustee of the Tate with pieces in national collections.

Anthony d’Offay also looks back at the show as a watershed moment in his career. The works he commissioned, which showed the balding Warhol in a giant fright wig, have since become some of the artist’s most acclaimed and recognisable works. One of them sold at Sotheby’s in New York last year for $32.6 million (£22 million).

Warhol died seven months after the London show, aged 58. According to Deller he remains a potent source of inspiration. “We’re still catching up with him, I think. “

Well yes. Few artists who followed on from Warhol have managed to match $32.6 million. Maybe only Damien Hirst. So he's right: there's still some catching up to do.

In the old days, of course, art was a profession where you'd be apprenticed to a master while he'd pass on his hard-earned expertise. Now, in keeping with the artist's elevation to the priesthood, it's all about that sacred rite of passing the juju on to the next generation: the laying on of hands – though of course in the appropriately modern non-ecclesiastical setting of a hotel room. At least Warhol, unlike much of the Catholic establishment, laid his hands on post-pubescent boys. 

Watching Benny Hill to the sound of Roxy Music, though? Hmm. How about the other way round? Being expertly groped while watching that….now we're talking art.