It may only be early January, but Lost in Showbiz will be simply outraged if Shia LaBeouf is not a leading contender for Most Dutiful Celebrity of 2014.

Instinctively aware of his responsibilities to be a plonker of the absolute first water, the better to amuse the rest of us, the Transformers actor has opened the year with a bang. Even as other movie stars remain focused on the work, or deluded enough to imagine that their nutritional arrangements pass for a philosophy, Shia's shenanigans remind us that the most important profession in the world simply doesn't have to be this way.

Refusing to let Miley Cyrus get away with fancying herself the most malfunctioning former Disney star, Shia's recent activities include:

• Revealing he sent Lars Von Trier pictures of his penis in order to secure the role in Nymphomaniac.

• Doing acid in front of Ron Weasley while filming a scene for his other forthcoming move, The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman. "He smashed the place up, got naked and kept seeing this owl," revealed Rupert Grint the other day. "If anything will make you not do drugs, it's watching that." (What a scene it promises to be. I do admire directors' continued commitment to creating situations ripe for the deployment of Ron's single acting expression – the terrified wide eyes then the big gulp. Come on: who hasn't missed that expression? Statistics simply do not lie, and that is £24m-worth of acting chops right there.)

• Admitting to plagiarising all manner of stuff, primarily the work of graphic novelist Daniel Clowes in his most recent short film. Legal letters drew a brief pause, before Shia appeared to tire of humble pie, and begin digressing on the iniquitous fallacy of authorship with inquiries such as: "Should God sue me if I paint a river?" (answer: Yes! Please let this happen – and let Lars Von Trier and Michael Bay co-direct). Last week he hired a skywriter to write I AM SORRY DANIEL CLOWES in the sky. Not in the sky above where Clowes lives, you understand – he seems to be a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. But in the sky above where the relevant people live – the sky above Hollywood, where those who might one day give Shia a job would see it and think: "What an adorable maverick. I really can't wait to stake three years of my life on entrusting him with a multi-million dollar project."

Shia has since appeared to fill his days endlessly tweeting apologies plagiarised from other people – ironically, obviously – and offering theories on the free-flowing ownership of ideas that could only be flattered with the description "sub-sixth form" were the school in question The Derek Zoolander School For Kids Who Can't Read Good and Who Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too.

It's all frightfully meta – as in, have-you-ever-meta-sillier-billy? Shia is engaged in not so much a doubling-down strategy as an octupling-down one: the belief – I fear misplaced – that if you act like a prick, in exactly the same way, repeatedly, people will stop thinking you're a prick, and realise admiringly that you're actually engaged in an epoch-defining piece of performance artistry about prickdom.

At present, alas, the artist in question is still at the stage of being misunderstood and unappreciated in his own lunchtime, but that will surely change soon – soon! – as Shia's personal narrative continues its endlessly intriguing progress. Indeed, we couldn't run an item about him without resurrecting a Lost in Showbiz favourite: the auto-parodic GQ interview that permitted Shia to construct arguably the most hilariously studied origins story in contemporary Hollywood.

Growing up in LA's Echo Park, this explained reverentially, Shia was "nearly the only white kid for miles around", fitting in only because of his awesome freestyle rap and breakdancing skills. "It was sort of your calling card," LaBeouf explained to GQ. "Like, yeah, I'm white, but I have soul."

"Shia's forebears include a long line of counterculture roughnecks and artistes manqués," the mag continued breathlessly. "His maternal grandfather – from whom Shia takes his name – was a comedian and mafia barber on New York's Lower East Side, and his dad's parents were a Cajun Green Beret who drank himself to death and a beatnik lesbian who hung out with Ginsberg. This star-crossed tradition continued with his parents: Mom, a Jewish Earth Mama who sold handmade jewellery at local fairs; Dad, a Willie Nelson lookalike who was also a Vietnam vet, convicted felon, and commedia dell'arte clown …"

Forgive me, I just need a moment. "Commedia dell'arte clown" always gets me.

"Shia proved to be exactly the sort of natural-born hustler that this oddball family needed," the Gentleman's Quarterly went on. "While he was still a toddler, the LaBeoufs started something called the Snow Cone Family Circus, whose business plan was based on the notion that their Latin neighbours in Echo Park really dug hot dogs and clowns. All three LaBeoufs would dress in greasepaint and motley and run around the park improvising slapstick routines, trying to get some of the riches of the late Reagan era to trickle down their way."

Or as the more easily verifiable version has it: Shia was starring in wholesome Disney shows from the age of 10, picking up a daytime Emmy for his role in the cutesy Even Stevens.

But it is in the re-reading of this gem of an interview that Lost in Showbiz stumbles across proof that Shia has been a true original for years now. To wit: the GQ interviewer notices that Shia's truck has several loo seats slung in the back of it, and asks him why. Turns out it's for "an art project", conceived after Shia and his friends wondered: "What canvas has not been really, like, messed with?" Answer: "This toilet seat."

Aha! Ah yes! What audacity: to take the most ignoble of everyday objects, – an item of sanitary equipment – and declare it art. Did you ever hear such a dazzlingly modern comment on creative originality in all your life – in fact, in almost a hundred years? Shia may be a mutt, but he's Our Mutt, and if LA's cultural establishment can't deal with his genius, then history will surely give our hero the last laugh.