Roberts’ relationship with the city council and the local press has been openly hostile in the past –unsurprising as Plymouth often seems to be a quasi-religious blackwater, still reverberating from Wesley and the Plymouth bretheren.

Such sensibilities do not take kindly to the heady brew of esoteric soup being cooked á la Lenkiewicz. Breasts and genitalia, thrusting through Lenkiewicz’s shop window, does not a happy outraged Methodist make. There is an atmosphere on Plymouth Barbican. You can taste it. A greasy historical cocktail of fish, rope, oil, hardship and Plymouth gin. Fish and chip shops intertwine with fortune tellers and chandlery shops. Esoteric jiggery pokery pervades. The vibe here is not of the pilgrim fathers (a famous local export) singing songs of discovery, but of brimstone, hell and high water, of rum sodomy and the lash, of cheap life and free death–all reminders of Plymouth’s infamous naval inheritance.

Top 'The temptation
of St Anthony'
Painters collection
left & right – details

This is still very evident today in the “Sturm-un-drang” of a Saturday Barbican night in the company of a thousand others raising distilled gin hell in a playground twist of marine boots, high heels and alcopops. All not going gently into the good night. There is something of Robert Lenkiewicz that fits perfectly here.