I first saw him leaning against a wall, nonchalant and a little crooked, like he'd had a good lunch. I suppose what caught my eye was the prosaic surroundings—an old 60s sofa, a ceramic lampstand, a set of golf clubs. A Staffordshire figure of Rob Roy with a chipped kilt. You don't really expect to come across Stalin in the detritus of a suburban house. It was one of those cheap auctions where newlyweds and students go to find temporary furniture. I'd had a good lunch, so I left a bid at the desk. I can't actually remember how much. A few hundred dollars perhaps. And then I forgot about him. Two weeks later, here's the phone call: "Can we please deliver your dictator?" And that's how I got Uncle Joe.

He looked bigger in my living room. Six feet by four. Oil on canvas. Not a great painting. Rather flat. A bit timid. Inoffensive. But then it would be. Definitely Russian. A copy of an official photograph, a monumental head and shoulders. He's wearing a simple uniform of the Red Army. It must have been painted after the war, in the early 50s. I guess for an Aeroflot office or an embassy. I hung the old bastard above my desk.

Now, I know that Stalin isn't everybody's cup of tears. Not the most popular or inspirational face to greet the morn. I have done a quick ring-around of other journalists to find out who they have looking down at their keyboard. Everybody has a secular guardian angel. Discounting family, pets, and Ferraris, I was offered two Bob Dylans, Byron, Mark Twain, the Marx Brothers, Goethe, Charlie Brown, and a Pamela Anderson Playboy centerfold. This last one, surprisingly, from a middle-aged lady political columnist. I couldn't work with any of that lot. I couldn't have Melville or Dickens or Vanity Fair's Dorothy Parker looking over my shoulder. It's hard enough already without having some smug genius silently reminding you that all your mixed metaphors are mutton dressed as wolf. I got on with Stalin because whenever I arrived at a bit of block or boredom I glanced up and saw him with his benign, twinkly, trust-me-I'm-a-cuddly-paranoid-genocidal-despotic-thug-with-a-mustache-that-could-get-you-a-good-time-in-any-number-of-70s-saunas look, and it was like a rap on the knuckles in case I forgot the real bottom line, and why I wrote. Without wanting to sound too Orphan Annie, it was a reminder that the elbow room, the loquacious pleasure of being able to have public opinions and a free press to print them, is not a given. And whilst we're here, have you ever considered that if churches put up fewer nepotistic pictures of Jesus Christ, and more of Beelzebub, it might just stop a lot of Christian whining, blame, and finger-pointing?

But all good things and bad men must come to an end. I moved, and the girl who moved with me forced a little palace coup. There was, she said, room for only one infallible demagogue in this relationship. So when putsch came to shove, Stalin was out in the cold. I palmed him off to my friend Nick, who has a big house, empty walls, and dubious taste. He produces West End musicals. He thought Stalin was chic. Which just goes to show that one man's gulag is another man's camp.

After a couple of years, Nick called and said that, finally, sadly, it was springtime for Stalin, and all runs have to come to an end, so it was curtains for the Man of Iron. And if I didn't come and collect him, he'd get dumped in the street. So I called Christie's and spoke to a nice girl in the Post-War & Contemporary department. They're all nice girls at Christie's, even the men. Could they sell Stalin in their weekly bargain 19th- and 20th-century sale? Yes, she thought they probably could. Estimate of $1,500 and no reserve. Definitely no reserve. So that was that. But a couple of weeks later, I got a call. Unfortunately, they wouldn't be able to sell the picture. Stalin was being expelled from Christie's. They could, however, recommend Rosebery's, a smaller auction house, which might be interested. I called back. Really? Couldn't we talk about giving him another chance? What had he ever done wrong? Well, I know what he'd done wrong, but what had he ever done to Christie's?

"It's our policy," the nice girl said with a steely finality. "We don't sell Stalin." You don't sell Stalin? "No." So I called the press office. You don't sell Stalin? "No, sir, we have a policy not to sell Stalin. Or Hitler," she added helpfully, as if that made it less of a blow. "We don't sell Hitler or any Nazi memorabilia."*

So let me get this straight: You don't do Stalin or Hitler, or School of Nazi. What about Mao? Is there a body-count threshold? Is there a murderer's estimate along with the money one? Eight to 10 million? Something of that order? What about Napoleon, Idi Amin, Genghis Khan, Nero? Is Osama too much of an amateur?

Couldn't we give him another chance? What had Stalin ever done wrong?

"You'd better talk to my boss, sir."

"Hello, can I help you?" A nice voice.

Why won't you sell Stalin?

"We don't sell Stalin or Hitler."

But you would sell Mao if he was done by Andy Warhol?

"No. Yes. Well, that's a very good point, sir."

And at this very good point, a lot of thoughts were all shouting at once to compete for my attention. First, how pathetically timid, how paper-thin and unconvincing the gauze of political correctness from an auction house that has dropped the hammer on the loot of thousands of immoral painters and desecraters. The collections from pillaged gardens. The booty of exploitation and genocide. The icons of collapsed cultures ripped from their natural homes. Imperiously, the great auction houses have offered the judgment of Solomon's three monkeys: to see, hear, and speak nada, taking their middleman's percentage from both ends.

And then there was the grudging pleasure in the fact that something as banal and old-fashioned as paint on canvas could still elicit feelings that raise arty liberals to censorship. That here, in the heart of the highest, most whited ivory temple to commercial civilization, lurking just under the varnish and whispers of aesthetics and expertise, there is a prehistoric fear of the image of a dead monster. Like a shaman's cave painting. This daub still has enough borrowed horror to make cultured men fear its consequences.

And finally I thought, How Stalin would have chuckled. How he'd have loved the tingle of old power to evoke this ban and the tremor of fear in apparatchiks. And it was because of that, more than anything, because I'd sat underneath his glacial gaze, tapping out whatever I wanted to say despite him, that I wasn't going to let the old bastard win this one. So I made a plan. And then I made a phone call. And then I got back in touch with Christie's.

Look, you know Stalin?

"Yes," said the Post-War & Contemporary expert with a wary weariness.

You know, you won't sell him because he's him.

"Yes."

Well, what if Damien Hirst painted his nose red and then signed it?

"The Damien Hirst?"

The same.

"Will he?"

He'd be delighted.

"And we could prove that it was him?"

I'll take pictures.

"I'll get back to you."

One, two, three ... ten minutes later: "We'd be very happy to sell your Damien Hirst."

My Stalin.

"Yes. It will need to go in a better sale. And of course we'll have to revise the estimate."

Of course. It would be awful to underestimate Stalin.

*Though Christie's does have a policy not to sell any Nazi memorabilia, a spokesperson later claimed they had no specific policy regarding Stalin. I then called Christie's in New York and posed the same question: Would you sell my portrait of Stalin? The woman who answered the phone repeated what I had initially heard from Christie's in London: We do not sell Stalin.