Join the topic: trail of that missing Hirst

 Silk Cotton Shirt There it was! Hidden among the second-hand clothes in the charityshop was a rolled-up print, with brightly coloured spots justvisible. The missing Damien Hirst dot piece, worth tens ofthousands of pounds. The woman at the till accepted a fiver –and I walked out of there with the print under my arm, ready tosell it on for a fortune. "Yeah, me too," said Rachel Turvey, manager of Help the Aged inGodalming, Surrey, laughing. The same desperate dream has beenobsessing the good people of this small commuter town since ChrisEvans told listeners to his BBC Radio 2 show on Wednesday that hehad made a terrible mistake. "I've been moving house," said Evans, who sold his ￡10mmansion near Godalming. "Some of the stuff goes in boxes to stay,and some to go. In one of the boxes to go was a signed DamienHirst." His driver took the boxes to a charity shop in Godalming. Or maybeCranleigh. He couldn't remember. "I'm not a Damien Hirst fan," saidthe driver, summoned to tell his story live on air and identifiedonly as Mark. "I know he does things that involve stuffing sheep. Ican go back there to see if it's around," he told his boss, "butnow you've gone on air they'll be inundated." They certainly were, said Jeannick Roubeau, 47, who runs one ofeight charity shops in Godalming (there's one in Cranleigh).Suddenly there were many more shoppers than usual – bothlocals and visitors from London. "Not the normal customers at all,"said Ms Roubeau, whose "unique little shop" raises funds for thePhyllis Tuckwell Hospice. "We haven't got it." Did Cancer Research have it? "No comment," said a woman, "but no."The Mind shop? "No." Debra, a charity for a rare skin condition?"Not us, unfortunately." Tanya Lunn at Oxfam in Cranleigh said: "Iwould have spotted it. I did a Fine Art degree." Was the print withthe British Heart Foundation? "No." Barnardo's was closed, butthere was no sign of a big white artwork through the shop window."We haven't got it either," said Ms Turvey, 28. "Who knows whetherit was handed in at all?" It couldn't all be a hoax, could it? Surely a famously mischievousDJ with a scattergun mouth wouldn't get everyone excited fornothing, would he? Nobody believed Evans when he said he would selloff his possessions at a market after splitting up with his secondwife, Billie Piper, but he did exactly that. He laughed all the waythrough the story on Wednesday – but then themultimillionaire is paid more than ￡500,000 by Radio 2. Hecan afford to lose a valuable artwork. I can't. I was determined to find it among the other bargains inHelp the Aged: a checked cotton shirt for ￡2.99, a JeffreyArcher novel for 50p and a really quite nice painting on silk, in aframe, for ￡10. "We still have people coming in looking at the pictures," said MsTurvey. "As if it's going to turn up now. Ridiculous, isn't it?"Er, yes. Absolutely, I said, sheepishly peering around. "We get afew hundred bags left on the doorstep every week," she said, "Itwould have been seen by now. If it was a signed print, we wouldhave had it checked." But what if I found it? "Come back to me!" So I did. After buying apiece of white A3 card and a packet of coloured felt-tips. Half anhour of colouring in and there it was, my own Damien Hirst.Recognisable to anyone, or so you might think – but out onGodalming High Street hardly anyone seemed to know what the missingoriginal looked like. "I'll keep my eyes open now you've told me,"said Les Waddington, 73, a gardener. Would anyone notice if it was right in front of them? I put mine onan easel among the stalls at The Pepperpot, the octagonal19th-century building on the High Street. Then I waited. Andwaited. A woman in sunglasses pointed and nodded to her friend, butother than that, nobody stopped. There was nothing for it but the charity shop. Go on, I said to MsTurvey, it's yours for a tenner. "You'd better see Ray," she said,laughing. Ray Beck, a 60-year-old who looked much younger in hisskater T-shirt and dyed goatee, said: "Nah. I'll sell you a betterone than that." Mr Beck is an artist himself. "I'm anImpressionist," he said. "I have sold pictures for up to ￡400a time, but you have to be prolific to make money, like Hirst.Unfortunately, I'm not." The painting had not been found as we went to press. The DJ hadn'tconfessed to kidding. The mystery had not been solved. But for onegroup in Godalming, there was a happy ending. "It's like a fairystory for us," said Ms Roubeau. "He has been our Prince Charming.This has been fantastic for the charity shops. Suddenly, we havebecome very, very popular."