"I think it's absolutely brilliant," she states firmly from the beach in South Africa where she is on holiday with her young son. "I don't feel the least bit embarrassed about everyone staring at me naked - I wouldn't have done it if I felt like that. I hope it opens their eyes." No quivers at all at the thought of millions of eyes skating over her oversized nude form? Her "nope" is so abrupt it gallops over the question. The sculpture has already caused querulous difficulties for some. The Daily Mail, for example, which had campaigned for a more traditional statue, a memorial to the Queen Mother perhaps, found itself in the awkward position yesterday of having to criticise the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group's (FPCG) choice, without appearing to mock a disabled pregnant woman. It settled on quoting Tory MP Julie Kirkbride, who claimed that "the politically correct lobby has prevailed". Even the Guardian's Jonathan Jones yesterday criticised the work because its "meaning is so forthright, so plain, that it falls short of being art". Both are ultimately saying the same thing: the piece is all message and no art. Lapper, who is an artist herself, unsurprisingly disagrees that this divests the piece of its artistic merit, although she certainly attaches a heavy message to it. "Any critic who says it can't be art should get out more. Art can be whatever you want it to be in this day and age. Disabled artists don't get exhibitions, Saatchi hasn't bought my work, and who knows why? Why aren't there any disabled newsreaders? Anything that we're uncomfortable with we avoid. But now I'm up there, 15ft - you can't avoid me any more. Why shouldn't my body be considered art if Naomi Campbell's is?" But Campbell's body isn't considered to be art. "Oh, yes it is," she bulldozes. "People want things to be boring and safe, and that's why this sculpture is causing an uproar. I love it that people are talking about it."

Quinn phoned Lapper about five years ago, after having been given her number by a mutual friend. He was looking for disabled models to pose for him. "But when he phoned, I said, 'You won't want me any more because I'm about to have a baby,' and he said, 'That's even better!'" The only thoughts going through her mind during the day spent posing nude for him in late winter 1999, she insists, were how uncomfortable she was, sitting upright and pregnant, as opposed to concerns about modesty or even about the cold. But she wasn't always quite so confident. It takes a fair bit of prodding through the determinedly upbeat platitudes, but she will admit that there have been "some dark moments" in the past. Lapper was raised in care in a disabled children's home where, she insists, she was "too busy being a kid" to worry about how she looked. But when she was 16, the "why me?" thoughts began. "It did become an issue then for me, I guess," she says, in a quieter voice.