There was a story in "The Sun" at the time, with the headline "We're Drop Stars".  I used to have it, but lost it a while ago.

John

> Message date : Jan 20 2005, 01:38 PM
> From : "Tony Stuart"
> To : "All bound for Mu-Mu Land."
> Copy to :
> Subject : Re: AW: [KLF] KLF timeline
> Regarding Craig McLean's comments at the end of this - Cape Wrath
> isn't the most northerly point in mainland Britain. That accolade
> belongs to Dunnet Head, which is nowhere near Cape Wrath. Also - I
> don't think it's possible to get a car over there. I cycled over last
> summer, but John the ferryman wouldn't have been able to ferry a car
> over the Kyle of Durness to Cape Wrath itself, and there's no other
> ferryboat in the vicinity. I know that photos of this event exist in
> a book, but it seems more likely to me that the car was pushed off the
> high cliffs near Durness, but not on Cape Wrath itself.
>
> t
>
>
> On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:14:01 +0100, Thomas Touzimsky wrote:
> > That should answer most of your questions... :-)
> >
> > The K Foundation Burn �1 Million
> >
> > Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty "retired" The KLF, formed the K
> > Foundation, then nailed a million quid to wooden pallets. When everyone
> > laughed they flew the money to Scotland and set fire to it.
> >
> > 23 November 1993
> > On the night of the Turner Prize Art Awards, a motorcade sets off for an
> > unknown destination.
> >
> > Mick Houghton (KLF publicist): The seeds of the burning of the �1
> > million started when The KLF [Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty] "retired"
> > from the music business and set up their arts organization, The K
> > Foundation. They announced in full page newspaper ads that they would
> > award �40.000 to the worst artist of the year. When tehy announced their
> > winner, it was Rachel Whiteread, who was also the winner of that year's
> > Turner Prize.
> >
> > Danny Kelly (then Editor of Q): In common, I'm sure, with the other 24
> > media people involved, I got an enigmatic phone call from Mick Houghton
> > telling me to keep the evening of 23 November free because KLF were
> > planning something.
> >
> > Mick Houghton: The intention was to upstage the Turner Prize by nailing
> > �1 million to wooden pallets as an art exhibit.
> >
> > Danny Kelly: On the night we rendezvous-ed at Tower Bridge. We were
> > issued with high visibility jackets, safety helmets and envelopes with
> > instructions telling us to get into a fleet of limos and we'd be taken
> > of somewhere.
> >
> > Mick Houghton: We stopped at Heston Service Station and handed each
> > journalist an envelope containing �1650 in pristine �50 notes, and they
> > just couldn't believe it.
> >
> > Danny Kelly: I'd never seen that much cash in my hand before, and I was
> > excited by it. Was it a bribe? What was it about? We weren't told. We
> > drove on, down through the New Forest, and wound up in a small, brightly
> > floodlit clearing, about the size of a basketball court. Jimmy Cauty was
> > driving an armoured car around the clearing blasting out Beethoven. It
> > was quite wonderful and very strange.
> > Then we noticed that in the clearing lay several wodden pallets on
> > which was nailed a great deal of money. There was a man in the middle of
> > the clearing in evening dress with a loud hailer, giving out
> > instructions, and it gradually became clear that they wanted us to nail
> > down the money we'd been given earlier. I have to say, several of us
> > decided there was no way we were going to let this money out of hands. I
> > took it upon myself as an act of art terrorism to trouser my �1650. I
> > discovered later that everybody had palmed some of it.
> >
> > Mick Houghton: When it was totted up, the cash was about �9000 short.
> >
> > Danny Kelly: Afer much to-ing ont fro-ing, they had what they reckoned
> > was almost �1m nailed to the pallets. Then, with no further explanation,
> > we were bundled back into the cars, hammered up the motorway and arrived
> > outside the Tate Gallery. The pallets were chained to the railings of
> > the gallery, and poor old Rachel Whiteread, who'd just that night been
> > awarded the Turner Prize, came out and was offered the money.
> >
> > Mick Houghton: The actual presentation of the money to Rachel Whiteread
> > was done by Gimpo [Cauty and Drummond's assistant] on the steps of the
> > Tate. He stood there with the �40.000... well, �31.000 in one hand and a
> > bottle of lighter fluid in the other. She was pretty much blackmailed
> > into accepting it because if she hadn't they would set fire to it. All
> > credit to her, wehn she realized it was only �31.000 she demanded that
> > it be topped up the next day. That was very cool on her part.
> >
> > Danny Kelly: Then we all went off to Filthy McNasty's in Islington. I
> > ran into Bill upstairs and asked him what it was all about, and he put
> > his finger to his lips and said, "Shhhhh." And that was it. Like so many
> > KLF-related incidents, it was all beginnging, middle, and no end.
> >
> > Mick Houghton: Bill and Jimmy had also printed up a catalogue, in which
> > they had, for example, a million pounds whihc you could buy at a reserve
> > price of half a million. They made it known, via their accountants, that
> > this stuff was available to buy but they just didn't get any offers.
> > Nobody except them took it seriously. They wanted to have an exhibition,
> > but no gallery was prepared to mount it, not so much because they didn't
> > think it was art but because of the insurance risk. To have a milion
> > quid on display in your window was a bit like an invitation to throw a
> > brick through it and make off with the lot.
> > Anyway, they still wanted to use the money, which was the proceeds of
> > their pop career, as some kind of art statement. I think it was Jimmy
> > who came up with the idea of burning it, around May or June of 1994.
> >
> > Bill Drummond: Jimmy said, "Why don't we just burn it?" He said it in a
> > light-heared way I suppose, hoping I'd say, "No, we can't do that, let's
> > do this..." But it seemded the most powerful thing to do.
> >
> > Mick Houghton: Having made the decision to burn the money, we then
> > started having meetings to discuss how to carry it out. One idea was to
> > hire the Albert Hall on the pretext of doing a free KLF concert or
> > something, during which tehy would ceremonially burn the money on stage
> > in front of 10.000 people, but that never came to fruition.
> >
> > Bill Drummond: It wasn't about burning all the money. And it wasn't
> > about cleansing anyone's soul. In this context, a million is a lot more
> > than two million. A million is the icon. It's what we talk about, dream
> > about. It has the power.
> >
> > Mick Houghton: Eventually they decided to do it on the island of Jura
> > [off the west coast of Scotland]. Once they'd decided, though, the date
> > was set very quickly.
> >
> > 22 August 1994
> > The burning party flies north from Redhill, Surrey, in a Seneca Mark3
> > four-seater. They intend to incinerate the money the next day.
> >
> > Mick Houghton: The number 23 has always been significant in KLF lore,
> > and 23 August is particulary significant - don't ask me why because I
> > don't know. Anyway, they just took one journalist, Jim Reid of The
> > Observer, and Gimpo, and flew off to the Western Isles of Scotland.
> >
> > Gimpo: The plane lands on the island of Isla, then we hire a car and get
> > the ferry across to Jura.
> >
> > 23 August 1994
> > �1m is burnt in an abandoned boathouse n the Ardfin Estate on Jura.
> >
> > Gimpo: I Went to bed about half 12. At about 1.30am Jimmy was banging on
> > my door saying, "Come on, we're doing it now." So we drove in the rain
> > down to the boat house. They unloaded the suitcase, chucked a camera in
> > my hand and said, "Here, you'd better film this. Leave it running." And
> > the next thing I knew, they'd put the money in the fireplace and just
> > lit it. And I was laughing hysterically.
> >
> > Bill Drummond: I've never seen it as a destructive thing. It wasn't to
> > destroy the money. It was to watch it burn.
> >
> > Jimmy Cauty: Burning the money was riddled with flaws. There is the
> > possibility that the whole thing was just a waste of time. That it was
> > rubbish.
> >
> > 24 August 1994
> > Remnants of burnt cash are found blowing across the beach in Jura.
> >
> > Mick Houghton: I was expecting my phone to be ringing constantly the
> > next day, and yet it was two or three days before we got a single call,
> > and that was from a Scottish newspaper, because someone had found the
> > remnants of the burnt �1m on the beach.
> >
> > PC Ben McEwan: I had been contacted by Alex Reilly-Smith, a local estate
> > owner. He'd been walking on the beach and started finding charred
> > fragments of �20 notes. He collected �1500 worth, all told. I started my
> > investigations by examining the fire grate in the boathouse, and there
> > had certainly been a recent fire in which a lot of paper was bruned. It
> > looked like bankbotes, but crumbled to ash when I picked it up.
> > I then took the charred money to the Bank of Scotland in Bowmore,
> > where the manager checked the serial numbers. They seemed to be
> > sequential, from which he stimated that there must have been at leasst a
> > quarter of a million pounds. I rang Bill Drummond, but he wouldn't admit
> > to it. He just told me to read the Sunday papers. It's quite the
> > stangest case I've ever handled.
> >
> > Mick Houghton: For a long while after the burning, you could see that it
> > had changed Bill and Jimmy. There was a kind of haunted look about them,
> > like the immensity of what they'd done was affecting them. I think there
> > was an elemtn of regret.
> >
> > 3 November 1995
> > Drummond and Cauty take their film, Watch The K Foundation Burn A
> > Million Quid, on tour.
> >
> > Mick Houghton: They decided to tour with the film and debate with the
> > audiences, about why they'd burnt this money. It started off in Scotland
> > and they showed it at an art gallery in Glasgow, but they couldn't deal
> > with talking about it.
> >
> > Jimmy Cauty: Every day you wake up and go, "Oh God! I burnt a million
> > quid."
> >
> > Craig McLean (journalist): I met up with Bill and Jimmy when they came
> > to Glasgow to show the film. The following evening, I got a myserious
> > call from Bill, asking me to meet them on Cape Wrath, which is the
> > northern-most point on the British mainland. He said I would witness
> > "the end of it all".
> > It was a four-hour drive to Cape Wrath, and, when I got there, they
> > told me they were going to push their car - a hired car - over the
> > cliff. They wrote out a contract in white paint on the car, stating that
> > they wouldn't talk about the money for the next 23 years. Then Jimmy
> > gunned it to the edge of the cliff and jumped out. They pushed it over
> > and it bounced a couple of times and landed on the rocky beach with a
> > dull crump. And that was it. I offered them a lift back to Glasgow but
> > Bill said he was going to hitchhike to 900 miles back to London. He just
> > set off walking, and I never saw him again.
> >
> > Compiled By Johnny Black
> > Q, 2001-04-00
> >
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