Flower stunt goes awry

Press, 10 March 1987, Page 45

Flower stunt goes awry

Spring appeared briefly in the Berkshire countryside this week when Linda McCartney attempted to say something with flowers. So did a four-car motorway pile-up, long queues of angry motorists, and a stern admonition from Thames Valley police. It was intended that 20,000 colourful flowers, arranged earlier in the day by 20 men to spell out the name of the wife of the former Beatie, Paul McCartney, in letters four metres high on a bank 150 m from the busy M 4 motorway, should publicise an exhibition of her photographs in Bath. The advertisement was so successful that the police demanded its immediate removal. The unseasonal $55,000 display of primulas and hyacinths drew motorists’ attention so well that four cars were involved in nose-to-tail collisions, resulting in several people being taken to nearby Slough Hospital by ambulance, and long motorway delays. Linda McCartney agreed that the flowers would not be floodlit that night as planned and told the police that they would be uprooted immediately and sold to raise money for a children’s hospital.