Culture minister's sketch sells for just £60

A sketch by the Culture minister Kim Howells, who branded last year's Turner prize entries "conceptual bullshit", was auctioned for £60 at the weekend.

Mr Howells, 54, a former art student, donated his pencil drawing of a wine glass in a Swiss hotel to a charity for sale at a fund-raising auction held in Henley-on-Thames on Saturday night.

It was the first time he had tried to sell his own work to the public.

The minister had earlier joked he would be lucky to get "a tenner" for the drawing, entitled 'Hotel Table (Lake Geneva)'.

He did better than that – it was snapped up for six times that amount by Jane Yeo, who helped to organise the event for the charity Power, to fund landmine clearance projects in Africa. She later admitted her bid – one of just four – stemmed from her personal fondness for the minister.

"I think he is lovely," she said. "I just like him as a person and what he has done for the charity. Mr Howells has been so generous – it is just a hotel sketch, but it is much more than just a simple amateur drawing, it proves he can draw."

Mr Howells – a student at the Hornsey College of Art in the 1960s – attracted headlines after he publicly scorned last year's Turner prize entries, which included a Perspex ceiling and a billboard describing a pornographic film in detail.

He left a comment card at Tate Britain in London, where the works were on display, which read: "If this is the best British artists can produce, then British art is lost. It is cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit."