The protesters, meanwhile, have set up a fighting fund to hire lawyers and independent technical experts. One senses a distinct class problem between the celebrities, who are rich, educated and well-spoken, and Mr Cimicchi the country boy, whose manner makes up in directness what it lacks in subtlety or wit.One protester described him as “a cross between Saddam Hussein and Steve Martin”. Mr Cimicchi has referred the issue to the Umbrian regional government to buy time. A chance discovery by the local chapter of the World Wide Fund for Nature led to a furious public meeting at which insults were hurled in all directions.

A group of local celebrities – writers, politicians, architects and environmentalists, most of whom live in Rome and come up to Orvieto for the weekend – stopped little short of physical force to prevent Mr Cimicchi from signing his contracts.The mayor, in turn, described them dismissively as spoiled rich kids and “intellectual pains in the backside”, urging them to dedicate themselves to more worthwhile causes and vowing to press ahead with the project in the interests of Orvieto’s economy.The battle is showing few signs of abating. He had even lined up a deal with the state electricity company, Enel, to buy the rather negligible quantity of energy that the incinerator was expected to produce.But then, just a couple of weeks ago, Mr Cimicchi was found out. “I hope that one day we’ll have the same right in London as we have here,” says Mike “But I can’t see it.”. Orvieto is one of the prettiest hill towns in Italy, a celebrated wine- making centre with a well-preserved medieval centre and a stupendously beautiful cathedral perched on an outcrop of volcanic tufa.

What is the first thing you’d do if you had the run of a place like that? How about sticking a 150ft rubbish incinerator right beneath its imposing walls and encouraging every juggernaut in Umbria, plus a few from the neighbouring regions of Tuscany and Lazio, to rumble in day and night to deliver heavy-duty garbage?
The proposal, incredibly, is not a joke but is being put forward with great vigour, not to mention a certain degree of subterfuge, by Orvieto’s mayor, Stefano Cimicchi.Without telling anyone in Orvieto itself, Mr Cimicchi was last month on the verge of a signing a contract with a company called Sao to build the incinerator – in an inhabited area next to a river less than two miles from the city walls. In 1987, they turned the tables, suing the Metropolitan Police for wrongful arrest.They won that battle, but subsequent legal challenges, reaching all the way to the Lords, have come to grief. Their last hope now rests with the European Court of Human Rights, which is due to rule on the admissibility of their case against the British government in the near future.After the limited engagement in Dusseldorf, they will soon be back in their home town, playing their jazz on the run. They had to fill in a questionnaire asking for precise details of their entertainment, and an equally precise document came back in the post, authorising the “artistic performance” on a “trial basis”.Being legal is important to Mike and Jeremy, self-proclaimed “situation artists” with a mission to liberate their trade. “If you can get it legal and licensed, then you get good artists,” Mike says. “We are not begging with an instrument; we are performing art.”The distinction between busking and begging seems to be lost on city authorities all over Europe.Apart from Skopje, the Macedonian capital – where Mike and Jeremy for some reason enjoy celebrity status – every transport policeman and security guard on the continent is out to get them.They have lost count of how many times they have been prosecuted in Britain, but they do have fond memories of one famous case.

“This town used to be completely hit-and-run,” says the man on the bongos. “I never thought we’d get a licence here.”It took their German lawyer a year to negotiate the conditions with the railway company. For the first time in their lives, Mike and Jeremy were legit.As of yesterday, they are authorised by German railways to busk on trains in the Dusseldorf area outside rush hours for two weeks. According to the company’s stamped letter, they are to apply their art “sparingly” and provide a detailed travel plan in advance. They also had to take out costly personal liability insurance, in case someone should trip over Mike’s fold-up chair.The procedure may seem cumbersome, but for Mike and Jeremy dealing with German bureaucracy has been a liberating experience. On the 11 o’clock train heading for Erkrath, a suburb of Dusseldorf , the two London artists made history.