UnNews:Lawyer falls to his death at Tate Modern

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

15 February 2007

A promising young corporate lawyer plunged to his death from an art gallery stairwell on Friday after he and colleagues raised concerns over heavy workloads and long hours. The resulting mess was praised by art critics as a fractured take on the fragility of life or something.

The museum curator immediately placed a velvet rope around the corpse with a sign saying "Lawyer kills himself in an art gallery" and the piece has quickly become the bookie's favourite for the Turner Prize. Damien Hurst's attempt to stick the bits in formaldehyde were prevented by inspectors who were swiftly on the scene.

The lawyer - and now piece of modern art - had gone to London's Tate Modern alone where he fell from between the sixth and seven floors. He died instantly from head and chest injuries. Some work at the gallery had been known to induce suicidal feelings, particularly those daft ones made of human faeces that anyone could do, but complaints had been ignored and something like this was bound to happen eventually.

The Oxford-educated lawyer qualified as a £55,000 a year associate after two year's training with a London company: however, people who don't like lawyers lined the streets in celebration yesterday.

He was one of only 100 trainee lawyers a year selected by the company and had been appointed an associate specialising in intellectual property rights. He is the fifteenth such trainee to kill himself this year - who's to say there aren't going to be even more? Galleries and museums the length and breadth of the country have been opening rooftops in anticipation.

After up to eight years working as an associate, the reward for success at this level could be a partnership and earnings of up to £1 million a year. Suggestion that he could be scraped up and put in a jar, then given a place on the board, were swiftly turned down.

Detectives have described his death, just before midnight on Friday, as "unexplained but not suspicious" and examination of security camera footage has been inconclusive, particularly when the lens gets splashed with blood and brains and stuff like that.

The company declined to comment on suggestions that he had been required to work up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, but that's nothing compared to people in developing countries so what the hell kind of excuse is that anyway?

Onlookers reported that he may have been trying to take a photograph of himself and fell over a rail, but that just sounds stupid.