Two climate activists must pay Madame Tussauds £3,500 in compensation after smearing chocolate cake over the waxwork of King Charles
Two Just Stop Oil protesters who threw cake at a waxwork of King Charles in October have been ordered to pay £3,500 in compensation to Madame Tussauds.
Video footage posted on Twitter at the time captured the two protestors, 20-year-old Eilidh McFadden from Glasgow and 29-year-old Tom Johnson from Sunderland, smearing cakes topped with shaving foam in the face of the King’s likeness at the waxwork museum.
“The science is clear, the demand is simple,” they said. “Just stop new oil and gas. It’s a piece of cake.”
🎂 BREAKING: JUST STOP OIL CAKES THE KING 🎂
— Just Stop Oil ⚖️💀🛢 (@JustStop_Oil) October 24, 2022
👑 Two supporters of Just Stop Oil have covered a Madame Tussauds waxwork model of King Charles III with chocolate cake, demanding that the Government halts all new oil and gas licences and consents.#FreeLouis#FreeJosh#A22Networkpic.twitter.com/p0DJ8v3XVB
On January 31, Westminster Magistrates‘ Court heard they targeted the model “in the manner of a slapstick comedy”. The waxwork needed to be cleaned and repainted, while its jacket, shirt and bow tie had to be dry-cleaned. The ‘royal set’ set and its red throne also had to be cleaned.
Johnson was given a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £1,750 compensation and £250 costs, while McFadden, who has three previous convictions for aggravated trespass, was ordered to pay the same amount of compensation and costs, and additionally handed a 12-month community order, including 80 hours of unpaid work.
If kicking up this much fuss over having to spray some Vanish on a wax model’s suit sounds ridiculous and paltry – especially in the face of climate catastrophe – that’s because it is. As McFadden put it: “Shaving foam on a waxwork is nothing compared to the damage we see from the climate crisis.”
The action followed a spate of food-related action across Europe in 2022: in Germany, activists covered a £96m Monet painting with mashed potato, in France, a man launched cake at the Mona Lisa, and Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup over van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the National Gallery.
King Charles has been dubbed ‘the Climate King’ by his supporters, but his actions are at odds with his image: for example, he’s halted the construction of wind turbines on his estate, continues to frequently take private jets, and also erroneously argued that population growth in the Global South is at the root of the climate issue.