Artist to smoke Cobain's ashes

An artist claims to have made a spliff containing the remains of raspy blond grunge genius pin-up martyr Kurt Cobain.

The Graunida coughs that Aussie-born Natascha Stellmach, currently exhibiting at Berlin's Galerie Wagner + Partner, plans to sneak the fat one into a secret location in the city and have a good old toke as the finale to her exhibition on 11 October. The exhibition, Set Me Free, is a five-part "death cycle", and the symbolic puff is meant to emancipate the rock star at last from all the nasty media brouhaha he sought to escape - but naturally exacerbated - in 1994 by means of a shotgun to the head.

The supposed Cobain cremato-chronic has inevitably raised questions as to how Stellmach came into possession of some of music's most revered dust. Unsurprisingly, the artist has revealed little, saying that the ashes "came to" her: "That's confidential and kind of magic," she cooed to Art World magazine. An excellent riposte to any implication of dodgy snaffling, which we must remember to use.

Kurt's ashes were mostly scattered at a Buddhist temple in New York and in Washington's Wishkah River, with the remaining portion nestled in a pink handbag in the possession of his widow, the not-untalented much-despised yo-yo-weight rehab-regular conspiracy-magnet Courtney Love. There were reports in June the ashes had been stolen from her. The Love camp has now pooh-poohed the claims, saying the burglary was "erroneously reported", according to SFgate.com.

The warbler-weed controversy recalls the momentary foofaraw last spring concerning Rolling Stone Keith "Keef" Richards allegedly hoovering up his own dear departed dad's ashes, chopped and mixed into a nice fat line of Colombian naughty-powder, shrugging that he "couldn't resist". Next week, rumours abound that Katy "I Kissed A Girl And Really Upset My Po-Faced Religious Parents" Perry baked bits of Bo Diddley in a pie, and ate it all up. ®