@jonty @clive ROBERT Hughes, the Australian art critic, filmmaker and writer, wandered into the kitchen of his fashionable loft home in New York’s SoHo to see how the plumber was going, setting up his new dishwasher.

On his knees grappling with the machine, the plumber heard a noise and looked up.
Hughes gasped: “My god, you’re Philip Glass. I can’t believe it. What are you doing here?”

Glass, one of the world’s most famous composers, said afterwards: “It was obvious that I was installing his new dishwasher, and I told him I would soon be finished.”

“But you are an artist,” Hughes protested.

Glass said: “I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well, and that he should go away and let me finish.”