Christopher Gray spots another one of John Buckley's trademark sculptures on a trip to Brighton

Sculptor John Buckley’s iconic can-can legs, with their black-and-white striped stockings, which used to point to the sky opposite his even more famous Headington shark, are now part of the streetscape of Brighton. They kick triumphantly above the Duke of York’s Picture House, to which they were moved by its then owner, Bill Heine, when his Not the Moulin Rouge closed in 1991.

Last weekend, on a visit to Brighton, I discovered that a matching pair of legs, in different coloured stockings, is now in place above another cinema, in the town’s trendy North Laines area.

This is the two-screen Duke’s, at the Komedia comedy club in Gardner Street, which is likewise run by Picturehouse Cinemas. Installed just over a year ago when the cinema opened, they were created by Jamie McCartney. He is an artist specialising in work based on parts of the human body. All parts of the human body — a fact which has guaranteed him much publicity, though private parts do not figure especially prominently in his oeuvre. I discovered his identity in a strange way. Half an hour after taking the picture you can see on the right, I found myself chatting to a barman at The Bath Arms, one of Brighton’s most appealing pubs (there are many of these!), half a mile or so away in the Lanes. As Oliver Watson (as I now know him to be) poured my glass of wine, he told me that he worked as an assistant to “the artist who did the cinema legs”. Helping with these, indeed, had been his first job for Jamie.

For more information about the man concerned, Oliver directed me to the website of Jamie’s firm, Brighton Body Casting. Do the same and you will find that this company does precisely what it says on the tin. Clearly revealed, too, is the fact that Jamie is an artist of considerable distinction. Back at my desk on Monday, I telephoned Jamie to discuss the cinema’s commission.

He said: “The cinema owners originally wanted me to do the legs the same as those at the Duke of York’s. But I wasn’t happy with that. I said I wasn’t going to copy another artist’s work. There is honour among artists, you know. If they wanted a John Buckley sculpture, they should ask John Buckley to do it. “Well, they did ask him, and he wasn’t able to. But I still wanted it to be different. Because the legs are above a building that is partly used as a comedy club, I decided to introduce a comic element.

“This was done by removing the shoe from the leg sticking up, as if to suggest it had been flung off in the vigour of the dancing. The missing shoe can be seen on the lip of the roof.” That this is not the most unusual job done by the artist can be judged from these words on the Brighton Body Casting website: “Naughty bits refer to bums, boobs, and the old undercarriage. Any part of the body can be cast so don’t be shy. You can be cast in kickers [sic] or a thong or bra if you’d prefer to retain a little modesty.”

The majority of his jobs are much more conventional, though, including a cast of the face of a Lichtenstein princess and, most recently, a life-size figure of a 1930s’ bathing beauty for the Cleethorpes Lido.

I wonder if she has the voluptuousness of thigh and calf of his can-can legs, which were quite clearly based on John Buckley’s original.

And who was the model for this?

My friend Bill Heine is able to supply the answer.

“I can give you a Michael Caine ‘not a lot of people know that’ fact,” he said. “They were actually modelled on the legs of a tax inspector. She came calling on John for money, and he managed to persuade her to sit for him.”