Antony Gormley, very tall, stooped, stands behind me, much of his body in close contact with mine. We are peering at some metalwork, a mock-up of the structure of Drift, a gigantic, open, cloudlike frame containing, as almost always with Gormley, the figure of a man. This vast object will hang in the 88-metre-tall atrium of a hotel in Singapore. “Hopefully,” he says, “it will be an incredibly moving experience, this sense of vertigo as you look down from the balconies — it’s transparent, and you’ll see through it to the people below.” He likes big things, big spaces, but not, apparently, when he’s talking to people. Then he seems to prefer no space at all. I don’t quite know what to make of the proximity thing, but anyway . . . “Drift is the biggest thing we’re doing at the moment. Well, we are going to build this 50-metre-high sculpture in Dublin. It’s not called anything at the moment. Somebody suggested Rain Man . . . There’s no reason why it shouldn’t go ahead, apart from the fact that the Celtic tiger seems to be dead.”

We are in Gormley’s huge London studios, designed by David Chipperfield, just north of King’s Cross. Walking the mile or so from the station, I pass a car valeting shop. Outside, an overalled shop dummy has been attached to some kind of machine that makes it beckon people in with both arms.

It looks like a parody of a Gormley man, done by an unusually light-hearted Robert Rauschenberg. I am entering, it is clear, Gormleyland. “Oh, yeah, I’ve seen that,” he comments noncommitally.

There’s nothing obviously Gormleyesque about the face his studios present to the world. Press the buzzer in a blank wall and a gigantic galvanised-steel door slides back to reveal a courtyard, bleakened today by a chill wind, icy rain and a covering of slush. Two galvanised staircases, made treacherous by the weather, lead up to the first floor, where Gormley and his team are deep in a conference call to Singapore about Drift. He seems to be one of those people who think you have to talk much louder when it’s long-distance. Finally, he comes out to greet me, leaving his people to deal with the somewhat nervous-sounding guy from the Far East.

Times Archive, 1968: Churchill Memorial

A standing figure of Sir Winston would certainly possess sufficient bulk to occupy an oblong plinth

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“David!” he greets me.

Huh? Better sort that one out. But he’s off, talking to various assistants. Some indecipherable faffing later, he returns, having established that I am called Bryan, and takes me to see the big studio. And it is big, very. Various Gormley bodies — they are usually based on his own body — are standing and hanging about, and some light and not so light engineering work is being carried out. Then we go up the other galvanised staircase and sit down at a table covered with various exploratory patterns of black blotches on paper.

We are here to talk about his scheme for the Fourth (empty) Plinth on Trafalgar Square. I am part of the story because publicity is essential to make it work.

“Yeah, yeah, we need you guys. . .”

Me and this David, I guess.

On Thursday, a website — www.oneandother.co.uk — was launched, inviting people to take part in his latest work, One & Other. This is produced by a company called Artichoke and backed by Sky Arts and other, as yet unnamed, sponsors. It was chosen by the mayor of London’s Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group. A video will be shown concurrently at the National Portrait Gallery, and an as yet unknown institution will get the archive.

You can register online for free and, at the end of this process, 2,400 people will be picked. The choice will be entirely random, except that each region of the country will be represented in proportion to its population: 330 from London, just over 200 from Scotland and so on. Nobody is disqualified, the disabled included.

“This is, in a way, a process of democratisation, where people are not being judged. It is very, very important” — Gormley tends to double up his adverbs, for some reason — “that they are not. They are not judged on what they might do, how they might perform or on their ethnicity. The only criterion is that we want it to be a portrait of Britain now, and want people from all over Britain to participate.” He mentions the documentaries of Humphrey Jennings and the Mass Observation surveys of British life as precursors.

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