Maarten Bouwes <bouwes@hotmail.com> writes

In 1990 the KLF and their entourage set up camp on the Isle Of Jura with the aid of my uncle. Over the course of several days they managed to shoot some videos, do some frankly dubious things involving sheep, and then, according to legend, decided to burn a million quid - more on this in a bit.

As far as I can recall the money was supposedly burnt during August 1994, but the earlier visit(s) to Jura were a few years earlier when 'Waiting' and 'The Rites of Mu' were filmed. A friend of mine had a load of clippings from Scottish papers about a load of burnt notes that got washed up and were found by a Policeman (I think?) not long after the moneyburning incident.

...

From the Mancentral files:

I? I'm the nephew of a close friend and ex-schoolmate of Bill Drummond. In 1990 the KLF and their entourage set up camp on the Isle Of Jura with the aid of my uncle.

Funnily enough the uncle in question was also an old friend of this guy Archie I knew in Edinburgh. Archie also used to make regular trips to Jura to visit "the uncle" and previously told me that "the uncle" was an old schoolfriend of Bill D. Remember the bit in Waiting where there is a lovely walled garden - this was "the uncle"s old country home/mansion.

that legendary art-publicity stunt, a guy walking along Jura Beach towards the boathouse found an abundance of half-burnt fifty pound notes scattered amongst the seaweed. Some of the notes were in fact intact, and he managed to collect together a few thousand of your finest pounds sterling. The guy was my dad, and as no-one claimed the money back, he was eventually allowed to keep it - he donated the money to good causes.

Indeed there was an article in the Daily Record or the Sun identifying the man in question. They reported that it was 1500 pounds, and that "the dad" reported it to the police, who traced the banknotes, got the bank to tell them who withdrew the notes with those serial numbers, phoned up Drummond, asked him if he wanted the money back, he said no, and thus "the dad" was allowed to keep the cash. This is new info that the money was donated to charity though. John K mentioned he thought the guy who found the notes was a policemen, but I think this mistake comes from the fact that a policeman is quoted in the news story relating the tracing the money and phoning Drummond story.

Whether Bill and Jimmy know about the unburned money is not clear

It was in the press, of course they knew. cheers -- Stuart Young and Michelle Ardern, say.map@ihug.co.nz 66a Sackville Street, Tel: +64 (0)9 376 8100 Grey Lynn, Auckland, NZ Stuey is webmaster of the NZ Green Party - now redesigned: http://www.greens.org.nz/ And webmaster of his own personal website - a cobweb site: http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~stuey/