6. Finale

EPISODE 6 

[Phone Ringing]

BANKSY’S PR: Hello?

JAKE WARREN: Hi, is that [censored]?

BANKSY’S PR: Speaking.

JAKE WARREN: Hi [censored], sorry for ringing out the blue. My name's Jake Warren, I'm a journalist with Message Heard and I was told that you might be able to help me in the capacity of being PR for Banksy.

JAKE WARREN: I wasn't even expecting the phone to be picked up. I mean, someone I barely even knew had just given me a random number and said, “Call this person if you want to speak to Banksy.”

As soon as I actually heard that, “Hello?” To be honest, I wasn't that cool, calm and collected. I managed to blurt out something semi-coherent about who I was, but I could tell she was a bit confused.

I was cold calling her out of the blue, like some kind of telemarketer. But this might be our last chance, I had to get a yes or a no from Banksy.

I'm Jake Warren, and from Message Heard and Podimo, this is Who Robs a Banksy?

Me and Banksy’s PR went back and forth. Her voice has been recreated by an actor, by the way. Me, slightly flustered, trying to explain what we were after.

And I mean, you try and explain the interwoven intricacies of Andy Link, an art heist and the connection to the world's most famous secret artist. I could feel her almost staring me down through the phone until-

BANKSY’S PR: The best thing to do is send me an email because I'm just in the car.

JAKE WARREN: Okay.

BANKSY’S PR: You've got my email address?

JAKE WARREN: I don't.

BANKSY’S PR: Okay. It's [censored]. Alright, love. Bye-bye. Cheers.

JAKE WARREN: So, we were back to an email address. I did feel a smidge more confident this time. I mean, she could have quite literally easily told me to piss off, but it was starting to feel a little like the Last Chance Saloon, end of the line.

Perhaps we'd bitten off slightly more than we could chew. Was it too ambitious trying to get Banksy to speak to us? Perhaps, but, you know, reach for the stars and land in the clouds, and other such motivational phrases.

The reality is there is a reason he is still somehow completely anonymous even after all these years.

ROBIN BARTON: Banksy, what separates him from street art is, it's the key part of his being is the anonymity. I mean, that's his true art to my mind.

Andy  is like a balloon going off in a room. He's just everywhere and all the time, he's as far from being anonymous as you could possibly get.

JAKE WARREN: Yeah, they're sort of the antithesis of each other in a way.

ROBIN BARTON: Yeah.

[Music Playing]

JAKE WARREN: Throughout my exploration, I've really come to see Andy and Banksy as some sort of warped mirror images of each other. The polar opposite in so many ways, but in others, almost like strange doppelgangers.

After all, every superhero needs an origin story, and every superhero needs a villain. One who they can't beat no matter how hard they try. And possibly, deep down, don't even want to. I'll let you decide for yourselves who's who.

Andy had been there at the start of Banksy's career trying to help out a young up and coming artist. Their lives and interests had interlinked throughout each of their careers, always running in the same circles. So close, yet so far apart.

And then there was the kidnapping of the statue, the culmination of all the tension, but a stunt that despite Banksy success at the time, got both Andy and Banksy, their first ever front-page stories, poetically together.

You might think this is a bit reductive of Banksy’s career and a little too generous of Andy’s journey, but I think there is something to this convergence in the path of both of these characters.

As Robin says, the key difference is how they present themselves to the world. Banksy revels in his pure anonymity with short, infrequent comments, drip-fed to the press, always leaving them wanting more, versus Andy, trying his luck to get in every TV show audience, newspaper article, and film possible.

There have been plenty of theories of who Banksy is and why he's still able to have remained anonymous for all these years.

A few episodes ago, I ran through a few of the theories of who Banksy could be. You may remember I mentioned a Robin who deals in Banksies. If you haven't yet made the connection, it's Robin Barton, whose voice you've been hearing throughout the series.

JAKE WARREN: There are a lot of people who say you are Banksy, are you?

ROBIN BARTON: I am definitely, 100%, really not Banksy.

JAKE WARREN: Why do you think people have sort of accused you of being Banksy then?

ROBIN BARTON: I think that comes from sort of a game I played very early on in 2007. I'd set up a gallery called Bank Robber in Banksy’s sort of playground, which was Portello Road, Acklam Road. And I think because Bank Robber Banksy, my name's Robin, someone else's name is Robin, so it's a kind of tale of two robins really.

JAKE WARREN: I know there's still people today that sort of do accuse you. How do they often do it? Are they trying to get you to sort a sore slip up?

ROBIN BARTON: I think the more you deny something, the more people sort of can't quite see it.

JAKE WARREN: I mean, that would've been great if you turn around and go, “Actually, now's the time. I'm going to tell you that I …”

ROBIN BARTON: Wouldn't that be the-

JAKE WARREN: That would've been a great scoop.

ROBIN BARTON: The scoop.

JAKE WARREN: That would be great if you decided to tell me for this that you actually, were, in fact, Banksy.

JAKE WARREN: I was starting to get goosebumps, to be honest. Every time I asked Robin a question relating to Banksy, he immediately turned it back to himself. And while he seemed to be quite far apart from the image of Banksy in my head, he was insistent that Banksy wasn't this “for-the-people Bristolian” we all thought.

But how did he know that for sure? And wouldn't this be the most perfect Banksy move, to come into the studio to hear what we were saying about him, once again, under the cover of anonymity?

JAKE WARREN: If I wanted to try and get in touch with Banksy in some capacity, and again, anonymity is his currency, right? How would you advise I did it?

ROBIN BARTON: You’d have to slip him a note on a piece of paper.

JAKE WARREN: Where's my pen, if I slip it across the table to you right now …

JAKE WARREN: Okay, I admit it. Maybe I was getting just slightly ahead of myself. We've been searching for Banksy for a good few months now, and the whole thing was starting to eat away at my brain.

I was grasping at any straw I could find. Could Banksy have been Gilly, Wayne Anthony, even Andy himself? Was he truly a genius coordinating his own bit of feuds to get twofold publicity? Honestly, if that was true, I wouldn't even be mad.

ROBIN BARTON: I mean, I've been asked this question a million times, and the reality is we all know who Banksy is. Just Google him and there it comes, straight up. The point is, there's a social amnesia, which doesn't allow people to understand that what they're looking at is what they see.

JAKE WARREN: Do you think it's almost that we're wanting - willfully - wanting to not believe what the evidence is?

ROBIN BARTON: Yeah, it's a complete denial. No one wants to know that Banksy’s a 40-something-year-old white male, if he is; worse, a 60-year-old white male.

[Music Playing]

JAKE WARREN: I think it's so interesting that all these people I've been talking to at least claim to know exactly who Banksy is, and they're all just keeping it quiet, or as Robin did, allude to it extremely heavily, but always stop themselves just before crossing that thin line of reveal.

Which as someone with a great vested interest in keeping the anonymity of Banksy, it seems amazing that he would even do so. But for me, it felt like destroying the myth. Gilly had mentioned it. Banksy’s identity feels a bit like Santa Claus.

People love the pageantry and the theatre of it all and eat up the mystery about who Banksy really is, and how he's managed to stay anonymous for all this time. Just telling them, “Oh, by the way, we know who it is, feels like being a miserly fun sponge and spoil sport.”

It's like looking at a child square in the eyes revealing that Santa doesn't exist. It's why even I can't seem to bring myself to just say it straight up. Instead, me, a grown 32-year-old man, is telling you to do your own homework and just Google it so I don't have to spoil the fun for you, and have blood coloured spray paint on my hands.

Am I being just as complicit as the rest of the media in Banksy’s big ruse? But knowing his identity or not, we still wanted to talk to him, to connect the lives of these two characters that have been for decades, intertwined to a degree, but never quite merging.

Everyone has an opinion on Banksy, the masked marauding character, but this was much more than that. I was seeking Banksy, the human being behind it all. I wanted to know his thoughts, his feelings. I didn't need to know his face or even his real name. So, I went for that one final push and emailed Banksy’s PR rep.

I carefully crafted my email with my team, agonising over every last word and minute detail, but the response came back almost instantly.

“Hi Jake, thanks for the offer of taking part, but we will have to pass. Good luck with it all. Very best.”

We have been told by our source who gave us the details of Banksy’s PR that they will always put offers in front of Banksy. So, even if you get a no, that's coming from the horse's mouth.

Obviously, we had no way of verifying this, but I do take comfort from the fact that he at least probably knows that we've tried, and it was his own decision to stay in the shadows.

The result wasn't too disheartening though. We really just wanted the most authentic response possible from Banksy and his team. And now, we finally had one. It was the end of the road, but not the end of our story.

As a very serious investigative journalist, of course, I still had some burning questions about Andy, about his art, about the whole heist affair. When I first heard the story about the kidnapping, about the feud, about this whole entire caper, to be honest, I just found it pretty funny.

I mean, some guy just rocks up with a truck, picks up a Banksy from Central London and keeps it in his back garden. But is that all there is to the story? Is it all just a bit of a piss take and a laugh?

MATILDA: There is a whole thing in contemporary art, in conceptual art. The emperor's new clothes, is it as good as everyone says it is, is it worth looking at? Is it worth putting in a gallery? Is it worth the money?

And the questions to those answers aren't always yes. That doesn't mean necessarily that you can claim to have always been a conceptual artist because you sprawled the word “fuck” on a wall and got arrested when you were nine.

JAKE WARREN: Many of the people we spoke to had pretty derisory things to say about Andy, but the fact is they knew him well enough to even have those unkind things to say. With the heist of the Banksy statue, Andy had realised that showing up in a high vis jacket with a lorry made it incredibly easy to just take art.

So, soon afterwards, he kidnapped a Neon Tracey Emin artwork that read “Just Love Me,” which was installed at the Hackney Empire, a theatre in East London. He showed up with the same flatbed truck that he had used for The Drinker, and with the confidence of a now previously successful hijacker, simply took it off the wall.

ANDY LINK: What I did as well is I replaced the piece with my Art Kieda logo, so I just put an Art Kieda logo. That was to prove it wasn't an act of theft. I didn't have a ransom for it, I just thought it was a bit of a giggle, really.

JAKE WARREN: But true to his word that he was just borrowing the piece, he returned it soon after with a bunch of white roses for both Emin and the Hackney Empire.

JAKE WARREN: But did you ever speak to actually Tracey Emin herself?

ANDY LINK: I actually bumped into her one day and said, “Oh, I'm Andy AK47.” She looked at me and just ran off into the … it was an art open and just ran off. So, I just laughed and just left the studio.

JAKE WARREN: So, she knows who you are then.

ANDY LINK: I think most people in the fucking art world know who I am.

JAKE WARREN: Well, the quality and even validity of his art is up for debate by people far smarter and with many more letters after their names than me.

It does seem that Andy has had an impact on the art world, especially that of street art, even if that impact might be perceived as a negative one.

Going back to that original signature, Andy is insistent, he wanted to support Banksy, an up-and-coming artist at this point. And while with hindsight, it may seem laughable that Andy would've been the one to make or break Banksy's career, we might not be giving Andy enough credit.

SPEAKER 6: I mean, even in the street art world, long before he kind of came out as a street artist, he was actually helping a lot of artists to grow, a lot of the early street artists. Even like our friends, such as Stick, even Banksy, he bought a lot of their early artwork, and just when it was like silly money, like £1,000 or £2,000.

He was one of the guys that was going out there and he would buy 10 grand of art off an emerging artist. And so, he really became popular among street artists.

JAKE WARREN: Stick, while not as well-known as Banksy is certainly getting there. His distinctive stick figures cover East London, blank figures contorting themselves as they loom over estates and street corners. And Andy served as his representative at certain points in his career.

SPEAKER 6: I mean, I don't want to start naming all the artists, but he's got loads of pieces that today are worth fantastic money. And when he bought them, obviously, he bought them for hardly anything because these artists were emerging.

But because he was buying their artwork, it did help them to set a precedent for how much that they could actually ask for their artwork. There's probably 10, 15 artists that would probably say, “Yeah, in the early days, he bought my work.”

JAKE WARREN: Andy clearly has an eye for this stuff, for artists he knows are going to explode. That's a talent, and we do have to give him credit for it.

One of the other criticisms of Andy is that he's just an opportunist. But I couldn't help but think after diving into this story that that's not a very charitable or even fair way of looking at it.

Matilda, when she first met Andy, she said that his backdated claims of artistry felt like opportunism. This is a criticism that's often levelled against Andy, riding the coattails of Banksy for 15 minutes of fame by association. But how does she feel about it seven years on?

MATILDA: Yeah, I mean, again, I was being a bit mean, but it is a bit opportunistic, but it doesn't mean it's wrong. It doesn't mean it's not art. I think all artists who gain any form of notoriety or success must be opportunists.

JAKE WARREN: As Andy Warhol famously said, art is anything you can get away with. But more than that, so much of art is about opportunity, hitting a scene or a zeitgeist precisely at the right time, and being a part of all these cultural moments. Andy had a hand in not just art, but artistic movements.

SPEAKER 6: It's performance art, you can't take it as anything other than it's performance art. And I thought it was really funny and obviously, Banksy didn't think it was funny. Because I guess for Banksy, he's like, “Well, you're trying to use in my name and you're capitalising on my name, even though you're saying that you are not, and you’re anti-Banksy. In effect, you’re promoting yourself is like off the back of the Banksy name.”

But the story in itself I think is warranted.

JAKE WARREN: Do you think he's a bit of a visionary that doesn't get the credit he deserves?

SPEAKER 7: I would say there's an element of that, yeah, a bit of a pioneer perhaps. But he's also a piss artist not in a, say in a derogatory way. He likes to take the piss. But yeah, I mean he should be recognized as a serious artist, I would say now with what he's done. He should have the accolade.

JAKE WARREN: Banksy has been the undisputed king of street art for years, and he continues to reign supreme. And like all pioneers who reach the top, he doesn't like people stepping on his toes.

He seems to have a sense of humour himself, having snuck into art galleries to put his own art on their walls. He's a satirist, poking fun at the establishment, even if he may or may not be part of that establishment now himself.

So, was Andy just playing him at his own game? Perhaps not in good faith, but playing it all the same. Adhering to the rules of no rules. Even Banksy in his 2003 interview with Simon Hattenstone, when asked if he cares about people selling forged Banksies or being ripped off, said no.

The thing is, I was a bootlegger for three years, so I don't really have a leg to stand on.

SPEAKER 6: The only disruption that I've seen him do is with mainstream artists; Banksy and one Tracey. I mean, they're the only two people that I've seen him messing with. So, in effect, I could say that, well, they're fair game given how the heights that they've reached themselves — I mean, especially Tracey. I mean obviously, Banksy is in a different category. But once you reach that level, I think that you’re fair game, to be honest. You're not fair game to me personally, but I see how you would be fair game to anyone else, especially if you are coming from a no-permission arena, such as street art and graffiti, that's where Banksy came from.

He came from the arena of “We don't care, we're painting it here and we don't care.” And so, when your artwork gets painted over or anything, destroyed or whatever, I mean, that's the culture we come from. It's a no-permission, no-control.

And that's the thing, once you put that paint on that wall and you take your photograph and you walk away, part of the art is whatever happens next. That's what happens. Once you put that piece of art on that wall, and you walk away, that is it.

Whatever happens, happens. Banksy does not care what happens to the art once he walks away from it. He doesn't want his artwork covered in plastic.

JAKE WARREN: So, where does that leave our story?

JAKE WARREN: Final question. Imagine I'm Banksy sitting opposite you, and if I apologise to you with conviction and I'm not taking the piss, I'm apologising to you. I'm saying, “Sorry, Andy.” What would you do?

ANDY LINK: I'd just look at him and go, “You fucking spineless twat.” I don't want him to apologise. It's the last thing I want him to do. I prefer if you were Banksy, you’d just rather … “You fucking, funny twat.”

I don't want an apology because he has nothing to apologise for. I don't want an apology.

JAKE WARREN: He did call you a cheat Northern bastard, though.

ANDY LINK: Yeah, I know, but I've been called fucking words by better than him. So, no, I don’t want an apology. Just shake my hand and go, right, a good caper.

JAKE WARREN: In the end, I don't even think it was about Banksy.

ANDY LINK: I didn't actually choose to pick on Banksy on a personal level. It was a statement. It was never a personal attack on him or his work, it was an attack on art.

JAKE WARREN: Sure, he probably was offended to begin with. But what Andy really wants is credit, a seat at the table, and to have a laugh. And Banksy just happened to be there — an obvious vehicle to get both the attention, yes, but also the acclaim he feels he honestly deserves.

The mantra he would sort of live by then is that there's no such thing as bad publicity. If you get any, it's good. Even if it's someone slagging you off.

SPEAKER 7: Absolutely. That's accurate. Yeah, he loves it. He thrives in it, I think.

JAKE WARREN: And really, we've helped in that endeavour. We've played right into it by making this series, we're doing exactly what Andy wants us to, continuing the Banksy feud story and continuing to add the fuel of oxygen to its fire.

ANDY LINK: One of my favorite artists in the world — actually, to me, the most influential artist upon me - that made me realize that conceptual means you have an idea, and you just check what is in your head and get someone fucking else to make it, which is what I have done with my life all along.

JAKE WARREN: And The Drinker, where did our traffic-cone-crowned Rodin end up? Well, Andy claims he's still embroiled in a legal battle over the ownership of the statue.

When it was pulled for sale at Sotheby's in 2019, it was put right back into the hands of the current owners. Only time will tell if it's going to appear on some other auction house's books, or if Andy will be able to prove his legal ownership.

SPEAKER 8: Well, I'll just steal it and then see what happens. There was something going on in his head. I don't think he knew or he'd formulated what was going to happen or how big it would get or how long it would last. I mean, it's still going on, isn't it?

JAKE WARREN: Yeah, still today.

SPEAKER 8: It's like the longest heist in history, and it's like there could be another part too to this story because he's still suing Sotheby’s to get it back.

ANDY LINK: I'd like the statue, but it's mine. But I'm not greedy. I'm willing to negotiate. Like all good terrorists, we're always up to negotiation.

JAKE WARREN: But putting aside the legal battle, how should we view the original heist of the statue now? Theft, pure and simple? An elaborate piece of performance art?

Well, yeah, I think that's it. The whole thing was art from start to finish, designed and directed and starred in by Andy Link; the kidnapping, the feud, even this podcast, it all adds to Andy's aura, his story. And that was his intention the whole time. It's the conceptual piece he's been working on his whole life.

It's up to you what you think of Andy; a funny anti-establishment figure or a lowbrow opportunist, and what you think of the feud. But in the end, it's not about Banksy, it never was.

It all came down to Andy's constant need to prove himself, to fight back against a system he views as unfair and unjust, and also, to just be respected. And at the end of the day, isn't that all anyone wants?

So, in essence then, I guess, that is him, I guess almost seeing you as an equal. If he shakes your hand and says, “Good caper, you got me, I got you …”

ANDY LINK: Yeah, that's it. That's all I want. I want to be treated as an equal. He's no better than me, nor me him.

JAKE WARREN: Okay.

ANDY LINK: And I don't really fucking care, and I don’t need to. It's not important in my life. The whole cape has been very much important in my life because he's kept me alive really. He's given me stuff to feed the fire with.

They think I'm a one-trick pony, I'm not. But, fucking hell, I'm riding that pony until it looks like one of them donkeys on TV advert, you know what I mean?

JAKE WARREN: And having a larger-than-life target to fight against fuelled Andy, it kept him going. The power of a grudge can sometimes be the best motivation.

ANDY LINK: If one thing I could do is give my CV now to my headmaster of my comprehensive school because of my headmaster's report.

In the 1970s, when you left school, there were no such thing as CVs. What you did, you took your final year's school report — that's what you took to a job interview. And my headmaster then put on it … and it still sticks — “This is no kind of a reference.”

That is what my headmaster put. And I can show you with the school report with that on.

JAKE WARREN: So, he knew he was fucking your future career by doing that.

ANDY LINK: If he's dead or just before he dies — “There you go, you got that wrong, didn't you? Dickhead?!”

[Music Playing]

JAKE WARREN: From Podimo and Message Heard, this has been Who Robs a Banksy who was hosted by me, Jake Warren, and written and produced by Bea Duncan.

The music was composed by Tom Biddle, with sound design by Blu Posner and production support from Harry Stott. The sound engineer is Ivan Eastley.

The story editor and executive producer for Message Heard is Sandra Ferrari, the executive producers for Podimo are Jake Chudnow and Matt White.

5. Cash, Money, Art

EPISODE 5 

JAKE WARREN: The year is 2007, and Banksy’s statue “The Drinker” has now been sitting in the back garden of Andy Link’s Hackney flat for a good few years. Not hidden or anything, not even covered by some kind of sheet but literally… just… sat there. In other places, the neighbours might start asking questions - but this is Hackney, and this is Andy Link. No one batted an eyelid. 

But perhaps this made Andy a bit…complacent. Because in that year, 2007, Andy returned from a holiday to find his garden empty…the statue had been pinched… again…. 

But whoever was responsible this time left a rather significant part behind… the traffic cone that had been on the statue’s head. The drinker had lost its crown. 

So what’s going on here? A neighbour who saw a chance to make a quick buck? Some kids messing around? Another bit of art terrorism from one of Andy’s rivals? Or, maybe, after biding his time, it was Banksy getting his own back.

I’m Jake Warren and From Podimo and Message Heard, this is Who Robs A Banksy? 

This caper of the kidnapped statue could well have ended when Banksy simply said he didn’t want it back. He’d washed his hands of it and hadn’t risen to Andy’s provocation. Case closed, right? Well, not quite. 

The statue disappearing from Andy’s garden three years later opens up a whole new can of worms. But as we know, Andy can sometimes be somewhat...of an unreliable narrator, especially when it comes to his feud with Banksy. So I’ve been chatting to his long term friend Rosalia to get a picture of who might’ve been the culprit.

ROSALIA FERRARA: With Andy, his home was an open house and a lot of people came through the doors and I think at the time he told too many people. And that's one of the reasons why it was stolen, I think. A lot of people visited. I don’t know how honest I should say. I don't want to be sort of putting my finger on people that we used to hang out with just in case because it could have been people that he knew from Manchester that worked with the Banksy's team or other people. The jury's out.

JAKE WARREN: So…really anyone could have taken it. Andy wasn’t exactly keeping it a secret, I mean I heard about it from one of his own neighbours at a party. And why shouldn’t someone play Andy at his own game and take it for themselves? And if they could get it verified as a genuine Banksy, it would definitely be worth a quid or two…even without the missing cone. 

But what they hadn’t reckoned with is that Andy had a claim over the statue now. 

ROSALIA FERRARA: With the banksy thing, yeah, it was a whole kettle of new kettle of fish. He decided to take the biggest thing, but he just plunked, you know, I mean, it, he plunked in the middle of central London did Banksy and you know, anybody could claim that. And he has been clever about it all, really because he's gone through all the procedure of it, declaring that, you know, he'd found something in the middle of the stray, even though it's 10-foot, got a crime number for it and gone through the whole right route to be able to claim it himself. 

JAKE WARREN: The original Banksy statue was essentially dumped in central London - and like with all of Banksy’s work, he didn’t have permission from the council. So when Andy reported it to the police and Banksy didn’t claim it back, Andy became its true owner. Or so he claims, anyway…

ANDY LINK: When it got stolen, not only did I just report it stolen, I went to the art antiquity squad, who are allegedly as corrupt as the art world. 

JAKE WARREN: I’m assuming  the “art antiquity squad” Andy’s talking about is the art and antiques unit of the metropolitan police. They specialise in art theft. Which in truth comes across as slightly less 'Avengers-esque' than Andy made it sound.

ANDY LINK: So, as far as I were concerned, and as far as anybody else is concerned, I'm the legal owner.

JAKE WARREN: In terms of the word of the law. Right?

ANDY LINK: Yeah. In the word of the law, I am the new owner of it because it had been dumped on the street. It wasn't put there legally, it was dumped.

JAKE WARREN: So, you are almost sort of calling in the ancient law of finders keepers?

ANDY LINK: It's not an ancient law. It is a statutory law.

JAKE WARREN: Really?

ANDY LINK: If somebody loses something, they can always claim it back if they've lost it. But he didn't lose it, he abandoned it. That is the point. He abandoned this piece.

JAKE WARREN: We’ve heard from Robin Barton a few times throughout the series. 

ROBIN BARTON: As I say, I've been dealing with Street Works for about 15 years. 

JAKE WARREN: But what I didn’t tell you, is that his work has, at times, been quite controversial. 

In the past he’s been responsible for removing Banksy’s work  from walls at the request of the building’s owners. But he’s come under fire for this - the point of Banksy’s work, the point of street art, is that it exists in a public space. Plenty of people think it should remain exactly where the artist intended it to be. 

Barton was responsible for the sale of a mural called “Slave Labour” which was painted on the side of a Poundland shop, a protest against the slave labour used to make merchandise for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. It was eventually sold to the street artist Ron English for over half a million pounds. English, in turn, promised he was going to whitewash the entire thing. “This is a blow to street art,” He said, “It shouldn’t be bought and sold. We’re tired of people stealing our stuff off the streets and re-selling it.”

ROBIN BARTON: The rule of thumb is the owner of the property that the artwork is attached to is the owner of the artwork. 

JAKE WARREN: But if it’s in public, how does that work then? If no one owns it, and–

ROBIN BARTON: If no one owns it and no one can hold any right to ownership over it, it just stays in the public domain.

JAKE WARREN: It’s not a question of finders keeps, then?

ROBIN BARTON: It can’t be finders keepers.

JAKE WARREN: Alright guys… I knew it was coming, you knew it was coming, so let’s get into the legal bit shall we? I promise I am no keen legal mind and won’t bore you with it for long. 

Remember when you were a kid and you would scream “Finders Keepers” at the top of your lungs after uncovering some priceless artefact on the ground to stop your brothers claiming it? I certainly do. 

But the wild thing about that is, “Finders Keepers” is essentially a genuine and actual law here in the UK. Sounds ludicrous, I know. But let me explain. Banksy left his statue unattended in the middle of Soho, with absolutely no permission from the council to do so. The key is, because it wasn’t left on the side of a building like so many of his other works, Andy was able to take the entire thing without damaging or destroying anyone else's property in the process. The statue was therefore, technically, abandoned. Legally speaking, that’s when the owner knows where they put it, but has no intention of taking it back. It’s rubbish dumping. Fly tipping, I suppose, but with a valuable piece of art.

It becomes a bit more complicated when you take into account the fact that all artists automatically own the copyright to the work they’ve created, throughout their lifetime and up to 70 years after their death. The legal waters of art, I’m finding out, are all a bit murky. 

But essentially, it seems that Andy taking the left statue from Soho, reporting it as lost and taking it to his back garden all seemed pretty by the book. 

But none of this really mattered at this point. Because the fact is, Andy didn’t actually have the statue in his possession anymore. It had been taken from his back garden, leaving just the traffic cone behind. And Andy had no idea who had done it, or even where the statue was now. 

So while he reported it as stolen to the police, that was really all he could do. 

Andy only had “The Drinker’s” traffic cone left as a forlorn reminder of the whole escapade. Life went on. 

He continued his art collection and curation, even appearing on, in my humble opinion, the criminally underrated channel 4 art show, “Four Rooms.”

ARCHIVE: “I’m salacious-stein. My friends call me philistine. I’m also known as AK-47, the art terrorist.”

JAKE WARREN: And in 2015, he even returned a new version of the statue to the same square where it once lived. 

He recreated the original “Drinker” statue, with a fresh new cone. But this time, “The Drinker” is sat on top of…a toilet. And the name on his plinth has been changed to read, maturely, “The Stinker.” Andy has even sprayed his own Art Kieda moto onto the plinth…”Take The Piss.”

Then, in 2019, 12 years after “The Drinker” disappeared from Andy’s garden…

ANDY LINK: Somebody just rung me up and says, “Have you seen what's going up for sale in Sotheby’s?” And there it was, my “Drinker,” with a shit plastic orange traffic cone that absolutely rubbish, stuck on it. An orange one, which completely ruined the look of what it was.

JAKE WARREN: The original “Drinker” traffic cone probably was orange at one point. But by the time it had arrived in the square in Soho, it was more of a dirty grey colour. Meanwhile, “The Drinker” newly up for sale in Sotheby’s, now had a quite clearly fresh out the box bright orange cone on top of his head. 

Sotheby’s, by the way, is both an auction house and a British institution, it's probably the world’s biggest broker of fine art - it’s truly the home of the art establishment. You’ll find it in the up market London neighbourhood of Mayfair, you know the most expensive square on the Monopoly board. So, when Andy saw what he legally viewed to be his “Drinker” up for sale there… He wasn’t best pleased.

The catalogue blurb even described the sculpture as having been “mysteriously retrieved from Art Kieda’s lock up in an anonymous heist” and It had a presale estimate of around one million pounds…

ANDY LINK: So, I went down to Sotheby's and I just says, “I want this piece removing.” It’s a criminal act to sell this when I am the legal owner of it. Five minutes later, some snotty nose bird came down and she's like, “Oh, Mr. AK-47. We've been expecting you.” “Oh, have you, yeah?” And says, “Yes, we know all about your claim. We have all the legal paperwork, including the COA from Banksy's people to say that this guy's the legal owner. So, we're rejecting your claim.” “But if you want to remove it from sale, what we can tell you is that it will cost you the commission we expect to make.” She says, “It'll probably cost you about 200,000 pound. If you have it removed, we will be coming to you in your sleep for 200,000 pound at least.”

Interviewer: And what did you say to her when she said that?

Andy: “Fuck off.”

JAKE WARREN: If you were Andy in that moment, you’d probably be thinking one thing, wouldn’t you? That Banksy was the one who nicked it back from his garden. Banksy had now given the statue a COA, a certificate of authentication. 

But when I asked both Matilda and Robin about this hypothesis, they were both quick to rule Banksy out. However, Robin did say something that made me sit up and take notice.

If he truly didn’t care that Andy stole “The Thinker,” why did he both to steal it back?

ROBIN BARTON: I don't think he did.

JAKE WARREN: You don't think he did?

ROBIN BARTON: No, I think that's the theatre of it. I think it's, uh, it's one of those silly stories that's grown and grown. Possibly someone acting on behalf of Banksy. Pest control are notoriously unpleasant and they’d very likely do something like that. I don’t think Banky would waste his time.

JAKE WARREN: Someone…operating on behalf of Banksy. This is where things get really intriguing. As Andy Link claims he knows exactly who took the statue. And he points the finger at a man named Steve Lazarides. 

JAKE WARREN: And how long was it in your garden for before it was stolen back? Well, we don’t know who stole it right? But how long was it there before someone

ANDY LINK: Well we do know who stole it.

JAKE WARREN: We do?

ANDY LINK: Read Steve Lazarides book. 

JAKE WARREN: What does he say?

ANDY LINK: Well, he says he paid gangsters to go and pick it up.

JAKE WARREN: Steve Lazarides is a photographer and curator. In 1997, he was commissioned to photograph Banksy. And he continued to work with him as his first art dealer and his photographer up until 2008, when they parted ways. Now, the BBC have reported that they no longer speak. 

In 2014, Steve brought together 70 authenticated Banksy pieces for sale at Sothebys, with some pieces up for half a million pounds. The pieces were also put up in an exhibition, in what was called an unauthorised retrospective at one of Sotheby's galleries in London. 

And it turns out, the current owner putting “The Drinker” up for sale at Sotheby's…only acquired the statue in 2014. And they bought it off, yep you guessed it, the one and only…Steve Lazarides. 

In a book he published in 2020, Banksy Captured, Lazarides describes how he discovered that the statue was in Andy’s garden. And according to Lazarides, it was nothing to do with Andy telling anyone who’d listen that he had a Banksy in his back garden. No, an associate of Steve’s had been over at a local flat and spotted it out a window. Just like the person who first told me about the statue. 

Steve claims his associate took the statue, spoke to Banksy, and agreed to store it for him. And, after about 8 years of keeping it stored, he passed it onto the new owners. And that was the last time he saw the statue.

ANDY LINK: I then went to the press. Funnily enough, I'm very good at getting people involved in my capers. I went to Moscow for the World Cup via a friend of mine, I ended up staying with the head of CNN. 

JAKE WARREN: Andy’s presumably talking about Jeff Zucker, who was president of CNN between 2013 and 2022. 

ANDY LINK: I had some lovely white t-shirts, polo shirts with the Art Kieda logo on it and “Take the Piss” on the side. The head of CNN, say, “I love that.” He says, “Can you get me one of them?” I says, “Well, look, you can have it.” I says, “But well, I'll tell you this now. You’ll take that t-shirt, you are sleeper of Art Kieda. There may come a day when I will call.” So, I got in touch via Gilly. And I said to him, “Listen, give him a call.” And he said, “Yeah, yeah, I will, I will.” So, I said, “Tell him, alright? All you need to do is tell him, he made a promise to me and I'm calling in his membership now.” Half an hour later, I get some call from somebody from CNN and it was CNN Europe. “Look, okay, we’re really interested in this story.” Soon as it hit CNN, boom, the story went worldwide. So, that was over the weekend. I went and did a live news bulletin on some cable news channel that covers all of Arab countries based in Istanbul. So, I did a couple of interviews because it had been insane and then all the other papers…only little pieces, but it was enough. 

JAKE WARREN: We couldn’t find evidence of Andy on CNN, although we did find a clip of him talking about the sale on Showcase from TRT, a Turkish public service broadcaster. But he certainly managed to get press for it, and the attention he was after.

ANDY LINK: The sale was on the Tuesday morning. On the Monday morning, I got this letter through from Sotheby's explaining to me that why they were not going to withdraw it and warning me they would be suing me for substantial damages. So, anyway, my intentions was going down on the Tuesday morning and make a bit of a thing at the scene, at the sale. I got a phone call on the Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock. The sale was due to start at 12:00. I got a phone call at 10:00. “Hello, Mr. Link. How are you?” “Yeah. Very well.” “I'm just phoning to tell you that the Banksy has been withdrawn, but it has nothing to do with your claim.”

JAKE WARREN: So Andy got what he wanted. The sale never happened. But he didn’t have his statue back. On the 17th of November, 2 days before the auction was supposed to happen, Steve Lazarides made a public instagram post. It was a photo of “The Drinker” in its original resting place underneath the Westway - a large elevated highway running into the centre of london. In the caption he says, “and please excuse the slightly un-family friendly language and the colloquial grammar.”

ACTOR AS STEVE LAZARIDES: “‘The Drinker’ seems to be getting AirPlay today. The dickhead who thought he ‘owned’ it after stealing it, and then got terribly upset when it was liberated again. Asshole. Even more hysterical is a bloke who's supposedly anti-establishment blah blah blah, is running to the police because ‘he’s a working class boy and the lawyers want paying to chase a non-starter for him. Therefore, the police should be all over it.’ Mate I’d suggest you grow a pair and stop crying to mummy.”

JAKE WARREN: We contacted Steve multiple times for a comment but go no response. But to be honest, that post says it all. So Steve is sceptical of Andy and his persona of kicking back against the system. But in his defence, my personal impression from my time with Andy was that he really is anti-establishment to his core, it wasn't inauthentic.

ANDY LINK: Yeah. I was always sitting back at class. And I've got a sense of humour and I hate authority. I've always been anti-authoritarianism. I'm sure when you put me on the scale, I'd definitely come up with one of these excuses that they give everybody for being a fucking twat. 

JAKE WARREN: But even so, his childhood and early life did also involve plenty of being told no. Being told what he couldn’t do. Being told what he would never amount to. It wasn’t until he was a bit older, that he had a eureka moment. He was in France with a bunch of mates, helping one of them take a boat down to the Greek Islands, as you do...They were out shopping when…

ANDY LINK: Jokingly I says, “Oh, can I get that? Can we have that?” And she got a gold off me, this girl Michelle, she got on to me and says, “Andy, you're a grown man. You can do whatever you want.” 

And that to me was more … that was a changing point in my life when that was said. Because I'd always been told, “You can't do that. No, you, you'll never do that. You can't do that. You can't do that. You're not good enough.” 

I'd always been destroyed like that. And when somebody said that to me — I remember at the time, I filled up emotionally with tears and I said, “Nobody's ever told me that in my life before.” 

Nobody can stop me doing it. If I really want to do it, I can do whatever I want. And I've proved it, I've not always doing well in some ways, but everything I've done, I've proved to myself I can do it and I'm good enough. 

JAKE WARREN: This story really moved me. And really started to reframe the way I looked at Andy. I think the fact that Andy remembers this moment so vividly means it’s probably true that this was a genuine turning point in his life, a day a page was turned and a new chapter began. 

It seems that Andy’s rebellious nature didn’t necessarily come naturally to him. While in school he might have been a troublemaker, his background still had influence on him - he’s always been told what he couldn’t do, and who he couldn’t be.

Meanwhile, the more I found out about Banksy, the more I wasn’t sure if his public image was matching up with reality. 

ROBIN BARTON: Well, I mean, he's self-serving as far as he, he's insured through his career that he's made an awful lot of money whilst appearing not to make any money. I mean, you ask the average person on the street, how does Banksy make them make his money, or does Banksy make money? And they always say, “oh no, he, he does it for us.”

It's always the great British public, uh, not just the British public, global public. Everyone wants to believe that Banksy’s this Robinhood character who's just working for them to enhance their lives, and no one sees the maths behind.

JAKE WARREN: And you know, you’re pretty plugged into this world. What is the maths behind it? How much do you reckon he has made? Is he a billionaire?

ROBIN BARTON: Nah. It’s a difficult one. I would say can be a billionaire if he wants to be a billionaire and all the while, the great public think he’s a hero, working-class hero from Bristol.

JAKE WARREN: These days, you could argue Banksy has kind of lost his seditious streak. Why was he allowed to leave the statue in the middle of central London without permission? Because of his name. An unknown street artist would never have been given that same privilege.

Could there be a case for Andy making a statement, like Banksy does with his artwork, that everyone should be treated equally? Or even, by holding the statue to ransom, making Banksy question just how much his work was worth to him?

I mean, really, what’s so subversive about lining your own pockets and agreeing for your statue to be sold at an auction house for over one million pounds? Especially considering Banksy’s been quoted before as saying “For the sake of keeping all street art where it belongs I’d encourage people not to buy anything by anybody unless it was created for sale in the first place.”

And it is funny. If you want to know the identity of Banksy, we were told again and again by our guests, all you had to do…was google it. And there it is. 

Rumours and theories have swirled round for years, some more credible than others. At one point speculation that he was Neil Buchanan, the former presenter on UK children’s TV show “Art Attack.” But after British producer and DJ Goldie accidentally referred to Banksy as Robert on a podcast, the pool of potential identities slimmed down enormously. There are a few Robs in the running - there’s a Robin who deals in Banksy’s, and, bizarrely, the musician Rob Del Naja from the band Massive Attack. He has been involved in street art under the name 3D, who Banksy has actually cited as one of his influences. And the theory was strengthened when journalist Craig Williams discovered that many of Banky’s murals coincidently appeared in cities that Massive Attack were playing in on tour.

But the most credible theory, and probably the one that would come up if you typed “Who Is Banksy” into google along with the thousands of others before you, is a street artist from Bristol named Robin Gunningham. 

But nobody seems to want to burst the bubble, to be the one to just come out and say it and possibly spoil the magic. Gilly used to be Banksy’s photographer - but even though they no longer talk, even he wouldn’t expose him - on or off mic. Although…he did give us a pretty good hint.

GILLY: …The media are completely complicit in the idea of having this kind of Robin Hood type figure. Or Robin Somebody.

JAKE WARREN: But while he came close to confirming what we might already know, he explained why he’s still reluctant to expose the whole thing. 

GILLY: So we've all bought into Santa Claus and people always ask me going, “what's his name?” And I'm going, “I don't want to spoil it for you.” And I don't want to tell, I don't want to tell people either, because I don't know. It's like saying Santa Claus doesn't exist, that's saying it's blah, blah, blah from blah, blah, blah. 

JAKE WARREN: It’s slightly odd - even saying the name of the person who comes up when you Google feels weird to me. I’ve bought in to the Bansky myth as much as the next person, and spoiling it feels…well like Gilly said, ruining Christmas. But is that all there is to it? What I’ve learned so far about the art world is it usually all boils down to one thing…money, unsurprisingly. And Banksy is worth a hell of a lot of it. And so much of that worth comes down to the fact that he is, still anonymous. It’s the essence of his schtick, his mystique and really even his value. The art world establishment has a vested interest in keeping his identity a secret to the masses - because it would cost them otherwise. Remember Robin and his theory about “Girl With Balloon” at Sothebys?

ROBIN BARTON: I mean, you have to understand with auction houses that they are so opaque and murky. I mean, there's no way of knowing whether anyone's ever spent that kind of money on anything.

JAKE WARREN: Well then the very notion of Banksy agreeing for “The Drinker” to be put up for auction at Sotheby’s makes far more sense.

ROBIN BARTON: It's all a game of smoke mirrors.

JAKE WARREN: The art world, like so many historic institutions, can be boiled down to power dynamics. And there was one part of the discussion between Andy and Banksy that I’ve been turning over in my head. 

Andy is often accused of riding on Banksy’s coat tails. Doing a poorly thought out stunt and using the Banksy brand to get in the headlines. So while Banksy is able to put out a statue riffing off of, and possibly even ripping off Rodin, when Andy plays a similar game, his creative ideas are diminished by others and he’s even laughed out the room. 

And while it can’t be proved exactly Banksy’s circumstances and background, we do know Andy’s. So I can’t help but think that if a different person to Andy was doing this, someone embedded in the gentrified art world, with connections at the prestigious Sotheby’s, maybe even with a posh southern accent, might there have been a different reaction? Wayne Anthony, co-founder of London Street Art Design Magazine, puts it best.

WAYNE ANTHONY: He may be sensitive, you know, I mean, he's a former porn star, a former football hooligan, you know, he's from Leeds, you know, so obviously he's, he has a working class approach to things, you know, which can at times be quite tough. 

That's what he brought, he brough that you know, no nonsense, “I don't really give a shit” type, you know, vibe to the world of street art, which is always needed because street art comes from the street. It's an urban pursuit. And although, you know, it kind of got overtaken by a lot of art school kind of students. Uh, you know, Andy kind of brought that rawness into it, you know? 

JAKE WARREN: When I tried to speak to Andy about his own place in the art world, and how he construes and views his own work, I got the expected brash response that I've grown used too. We can try and intellectualise it as much as we like, but Andy is well aware of what his own art means to him.

ANDY LINK: It's hard because I couldn't sit around and say art means to me now … it just means money because now, I've seen how the art market, how it works. It is mostly about money. There's a struggle with art which there always has been.

JAKE WARREN: Well, it’s that whole premise, isn't it, that some people say that great artists and great art can't be creative without pain and struggle and trauma. 

Andy: Well, that's bullocks and we all know that. You just go to fucking university to do all that. So, say that to Damien Hirst. He didn’t go through pain and fucking struggle. The most influential artist upon me, that made me realize that conceptual means you have an idea and you just what’s in your head and you get some fucker else to make it. Which is what I’ve done with my life all along. That’s when I realised I am an artist. You don’t have to create that much. As long as you think outside the box, then that's it. 

JAKE WARREN: Hearing Andy say this got me thinking. In his mind, he gets an idea in his head and, I quote, “gets some fucker to make it for him.” Was that what was going on here? Was I just playing right into Andy’s hands and continuing his grand performance art piece? Maybe I was that fucker, making something subconsciously for him now without even realising it? 

So with all these contrasting thoughts rattling around in my brain, I  felt I really needed to bring this story to a natural close. And how could I do that? By speaking to Banksy. Seeing what he has to say for himself, without words put in his mouth or supposed interpretations via 6 degrees of separation. What did he think actually about this all? About the statue he claimed not to care about attemptING to being sold for over a million quid?

Well, we did have one final lead, something of a hail mary. While we hadn’t heard anything back from the email we sent, we still had a phone number for Banksy’s official PR manager. Me and my producer Bea were, as ever, extremely optimistic.

JAKE WARREN: She’s almost certainly going to tell me to fuck off and put the phone down.

BEA DUNCAN: Yes.

JAKE WARREN: I’ll be very surprised if it lasts longer than 10 seconds. 

BEA DUNCAN: I’d be surprised if she even picks up so…

JAKE WARREN: This really felt like the closest we could get to Banksy himself. The last opportunity to get some sort of comment from Banksy and his team - even if it was to simply turn us down flat.

TALIA AUGUSTIDIS: “How are you feeling”

JAKE WARREN: “How am I feeling? What, about ringing a random woman that I don’t know to ask if I can speak to Banksy please? I’m feeling great. Alright, ready?”

JAKE WARREN: From Podimo and Message Heard this has been Who Robs A Banksy? 

It was hosted by me, Jake Warren, and written and produced by Bea Duncan. The music was composed by Tom Biddle, with sound design by Blu Posner and production support from Harry Stott. The sound engineer is Ivan Eastely. The Story Editor and Executive Producer for Message Heard is Sandra Ferrari. The Executive Producers for Podimo are Jake Chudnow and Matt White. 

4. The Banksy Machine

EPISODE 4 

JAKE WARREN: Andy Link had everything he needed to carry out his daring heist. The kidnapping of a Banksy Statue in central London, to be specific. And he was doing it with typical Andy nonchalance. 

ANDY LINK: …I just thought, “Well, that's quite easy if you can hire a fucking lorry.” Which I've got connections, all that kind of stuff. Logistics is one of my fortes.

JAKE WARREN: But as we already know, this wasn't your classic kind of heist straight out of a Hollywood film. This wasn’t a balaclavas, ducking under lasers kind of situation. Andy Link and his crack team didn’t want to get caught sneaking around under the cover of darkness. This was the definition of hiding in plain sight. 

There were a few people milling around the square, but nobody really took any notice of them. It was a far simpler job than any of them could have hoped for. 

They just… picked up the statue, plonked it on their truck, and drove off…and that was that, remarkably un-Oceans 11 in truth.

No highly specialised gadgets…No hacking into alarm systems…If it wasn’t for the outfits, anyone watching would have thought they were simply from the local council.

GILLY: And that's the thing about graffiti and the artists is, is that if you, the more brazen you are, you know you put off a high vis jacket on and, and then no one will say anything to you. 

JAKE WARREN: So when did you first hear about the plan to kidnap the Banksy statue?

GILLY: A couple of days before. We'd talked on the phone. And then he sort of went quiet and then he called me up from the Lorry. Saying I’ve got it. And I was like what? So I just went over to his house. 

GILLY: There was mention of it and a talk of it, but I didn't think he'd do it. But you know, like Linky, he always delivers when he says he's gonna do something. So he called me over and it was sort of there under this lockup, under this arch, within this kind of like one of those repair shops in the corner. And he was like, I dunno what to do. I'm like, “well, what we gonna do?” So then we just sat down and came up with a kind of plan.

ANDY LINK: Yeah. My mate were living in a warehouse after that. So, we then took it to the warehouse that my mate had got. And we had it on the loading bay of his warehouse for about three months. And then my mate were moving out of this warehouse, so we had to then remove it. So, that's when I just got the same lorry driver to bring it and drop it in my back garden.

JAKE WARREN: And so once you’d done that, you know, you’ve got three months it’s in this warehouse. At what point did you send the ransom note to Banksy?

ANDY LINK: Oh no. I sent the ransom note the night we got back from kidnapping it. Straight away, I wanted him to know what were going on. So, it was straight away I did that.

JAKE WARREN: Remind me what the ransom note said again.

ANDY LINK: “Help me please, Banksy.” Just a picture of the statue with a piece of the broken fiberglass inside, like a finger.

JAKE WARREN: Like a finger.

ANDY LINK: Just to prove that … a photograph of in situ, but just against the brick wall so they knew I’d got it. And that was it and left it that. I didn't really leave no contact details, nothing.

JAKE WARREN: So, you'd kind of made it for him to figure out who'd done it? Left it to him to figure it out. And how long did it take for you to get response?

ANDY LINK: 24 hours.

JAKE WARREN: I’m Jake Warren and From Podimo and Message Heard, this is Who Robs A Banksy? 

Back in 1990, Wakefield was still reeling from “Finger In A Matchbox,” the rave Andy put on which… didn’t go exactly as planned. the rave didn’t just have a few arrests. Nope, it actually broke a record, and became the event with the MOST arrests to ever have taken place in the UK. Not exactly the best accolade for an illegal party planner. For Andy’s friend Gilly, who was involved in the rave scene alongside him, it felt different to the usual illegal raves they had got accustomed to.

GILLY: Andy's wasn't special. It was big, but there was lots more that was equal amount, um, of people and police. But the police decided to arrest. Normally they just kind of like surround the place, go in and take the sound system out and then everyone would go off somewhere else. But with that, I think it was a message to people going, “if you go to rave you’ll get arrested.”

JAKE WARREN: The police had been hoping to catch Andy red handed. The list of his arrests that we received was as long as my arm, but he had never been sent down before for that long of a stretch. But because he was the known organiser and figurehead of this rave, they were able to really crack down and make an example out of him.

ANDY LINK: So anyway, I did it, got arrested on ridiculous bail conditions. One of the bail conditions was that I couldn't cause or cause the organization of public entertainment, which meant if I was in a pub and put money in the jukebox, I was breaking my bail conditions.

JAKE WARREN: Wow.

ANDY LINK: It was ridiculous. Cut a long story short, I was on bail for about 18 months under these conditions.

JAKE WARREN: He was sentenced to 15 months in Armley Prison in Leeds, West Yorkshire.

ANDY LINK: Prison is just like another world. It's a microcosm of society because you got all kinds of people. You got people that are in for drunk driving, so you've got every type of person in there.

JAKE WARREN: Andy told me plenty of illuminating stories about his time spent at her Majesty's pleasure. But one in particular really stands out, and I think, it explains a bit more about the sort of things that truly drive him. About why he’ll go to such ends to right perceived wrongs, to push back against what he feels are an injustice.

And for the record, when Andy mentions a screw, he’s using the British slang term for a prison guard. 

ANDY LINK:  I never had any real problems except I had one fight while I was in there. How it works, you'd have to have a roll checks three or four times a day, right? So, they'd come over the tunnels and all inmates return to your own billets and spurs for a roll check, right. And if you weren't there, then you were … obviously, somebody's missing. So anyway, so they went missing from our billet. They found him an hour later and he was tied up in a mail bag at the back of our billet. Well, one guy thought it were fun to tie this … and the guy was a cat burglar. He was tiny. He was about four foot six. He was a small lad, and he was easily bullied. They nicked him and took him away. Somebody told me that this guy was coming and thought he would jack the lad. You know what I mean? Shoving his way around. Anyway, I says to him, “You're out of order for that” and he go, “What are you fucking going to do about it?”

JAKE WARREN: For picking on the small guy?

ANDY LINK: Yeah, for picking on the small kid because this guy then got nicked and were going to get shit back to a, what is it, jail down as an escapee, attempted escape. I went into the screws office and the SL sitting at our side at jail — I went straight. I just bullied him because I was fuming. I couldn't believe they knew what had gone on.

JAKE WARREN: What had gone on?

ANDY LINK: Well, they bullied him and they buillied him and put him in a sack and threw him out of the back. I hate bullying. So, I stormed into the screw’s office and, “What are you doing Link?” I said, “I'll tell you what I'm fucking doing. You know what's going on.” And he says, “I can't do nothing because that lad won't say anything. He's frightened to death.” He said, “If you can sort it out, we'll back you.” So, that were it. I walked down and it was funny because it looked like screws went on radio straight away. Linky is going to have that fight, obviously, all of it. Anyway, I came in and battered the fuck out of him. And said, right bosh. So, they released the guy. That gave me massive cred, street word on the jail. Not just from the cons but from the screws. The screws they knew they could trust me as a proper guy. So, I got a lot of leeway then. This sort of yeah.

JAKE WARREN: A man of principle.

ANDY LINK: Yeah. A man of honour.

JAKE WARREN: Principle and honour. these tenents really get to the heart of Andy’s character

If he was willing to put himself in harm’s way to literally stand up for the little guy. Well, maybe the whole kidnapping starts to make a bit more sense, doesn’t it? Because plenty of artists, Andy included, felt like they were the little guys when it came to Banksy. And that Banksy had either forgotten or forsaken where he came from and the people he left behind. 

MATILDA BATTERSBY: I think there was a lot of, a lot of animosity towards Banksy for sort of hogging the limelight. 

JAKE WARREN: In her time as the arts editor of The Independent, Matilda Battersby interviewed every big street artist around. With the notable exception of Banksy, of course. 

It turns out Andy is not the only artist with the claim of a feud with Banksy. And they all seem to have something in common…

MATILDA BATTERSBY: Whenever I've interviewed all of these artists, they seem to use the same words almost when they describe their feuds with Banksy. They seem to say, “he disrespected me.” It's this idea that this very, very small world of street artists who all know each other, who all operate under the cloak of darkness, who won't spill the beans on what their real names are or there’s a very firm code of honour around what you do in this particular small world, and I don't know if it's things that Banksy has done or if it's the simple fact of his huge success by comparison. People get very upset if he doesn't seem to acknowledge their work or even have heard of them.

JAKE WARREN: Andy applies this strict code of street art honour and respect to his whole life. Remember why he told me that he’d continued with the plan to put on the “Finger in a Matchbox Rave, even when he knew the police were on to him?

ANDY LINK: People can say what they want about me, but I'm a man of me word. If I say that’s something’s going to happen, I’m going to do it and I will do it.

JAKE WARREN: Andy served 7 months out of his 15 month sentence, getting out on parole in 1992. He immediately went to the police station to retrieve the cheque for the profits he’d made at “Finger In A Matchbox.” Andy was given it by Detective Chief Inspector Durham, an officer who he knew well. 

ANDY LINK: Anyway. He says, “Well, what you going to do with money then Linky?” I said, “I'm going to fly. Now I've got this, I'm going to book a flight to Thailand.” That was first time I'd proper left the country. He says, “Oh.” Sarcass. He says, “Oh, you’re first guy then Linky. What?” He went, “Yeah.” So, I haven't got you the address. It's dead easy Linky, its Police Force Intelligence headquarters, Laburnum Grove, Wakefield WF, easy to remember. I went, “Right, I will.” 

JAKE WARREN: And, being a man of his word…that’s exactly what he did. 

ANDY LINK: About a month or so later, I did, I fucked off to Thailand. Ended up in the northern provinces, working with the Karen National Liberation Army and stuff. But the first thing I did was get the postcard with the opium poppies. And, “welcome to the Golden Triangle” or “greetings from the Golden Triangle” and I put the address on to Detective Chief Inspector Durham and friends, right? And I put on it, “Dear Mr. Durham and your crew, just wanted to say, I'm having a lovely time, weathers here is beautiful. Everything's really good. Thank you for your help. See you again, never. Lots of love, Linky. LUFC.” 

JAKE WARREN: LUFC being, of course, Leeds United Football Club. This chapter of Andy’s life is fascinating to me. It was one of the stories he first told me, and one that in truth, I thought was a load of completely made up bollocks. He explained to me in great detail exactly how he ended up quite literally running guns for The Karen National Liberation Army, a paramilitary group fighting for self-determination of the Karen people of Myanmar, formerly Burma. They’d been in an on-and-off civil war against the Burmese majority since way back in the 1940s. I mean, a guy from Wakefield who’s just been arrested for organising a mega illegal rave under the motorway, somehow becoming a freedom fighter in Myanmar? Hard to believe, right? Well not if the supposed freedom fighter in question goes by the name of Andy Link.

But rifling through the swathes of evidence he’d brought over, we found countless photographs of him there. 

He’s there with troops on parade, watching them in shooting practice, and there’s plenty of him cruising down tropical rivers with the militia - even a couple more troubling ones of child soldiers holding AK47s. Whatever his true motivations for being in Myanmar, he sounded really swept up in their movement. He empathised with their cause, he helped their fight for freedom in his own small way. There were serious risk involved and he took them willingly.

JAKE WARREN: Did you feel, I guess, an affinity to the people? Did you sort of believe in their struggle?

ANDY LINK: Yeah, 100%. You know, I've always been a revolutionary, aren’t I? I've always believed I've, I've believed in power to the people. You know, and I've always been anti-authoritarianism, so they, you know, these people are getting, not, not only are they, you know, they're getting slaughtered. And they were just lovely and you know, I just looked at and these were lovely, lovely people. How could they be treated like that?

JAKE WARREN: This was another side of Andy I liked. While so often he seems to have some kind of ulterior motive for what he does - money, respect or favour…in this case he genuinely seemed to care about what was happening and the plight of the downtrodden. 

The street art world is inherently subversive - spray painting public space is a political act in itself. And arguably, no artist of the 21st century’s work is more blatantly political than that of Banksy’s.

The one thing everyone knows about Banksy is that… no one knows very much about Banksy. He’s elusive - it’s part of his trade. 

People claim he’s from Bristol. That his name is Rob, or Robin. But beyond the overtly political art, the few facts we do know about his life confirm his freedom fighting credentials. 

In a book charting the history of Bristol local football club the Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls, it’s reported that Banksy was actually their goalkeeper for a time. And in 2001, Bansky joined the Easton Cowboys and cowgirls on a tour to Mexico, where they played one of their matches against a team made up of Zapatista freedom fighters. Banksy even painted a mural in their honour while he was there. 

So once again, the myths of Banksy and Andy are intertwined, warped mirrors of one another, which might come in handy, as back at our heist, Banksy is about to figure out who has kidnapped his statue.

Perhaps this symbiotic connection between the two men was what made it so easy for Banksy to figure out who had kidnapped his beloved “Drinker.” Within 24 hours in fact. Or maybe the more likely story…was that Andy had the exact right team around him to help him get Banky’s attention.

JAKE WARREN: Obviously you weren't there on the day, but he came to show you, you know, hidden under a tarpaulin in a, a garage lockup in an arch or whatever it was. How did he seem?

GILLY: Like he always is - just full of it. There's all these guys, you know, this garage that are repairing taxis and they’re all just looking at him going, “what the hell is going on? What is that thing, anyway?” I mean, it's an ugly piece of statue anyway.

JAKE WARREN: Another thing about Gilly is… while lots of people in our story sort of know Banksy to some degree of separation, Gilly actually knew him well. He used to work with him in his days as a photographer, and he also had plenty of press connections. So he knew exactly who to call to get a media buzz going.

GILLY: I mean, we had idea was to ransom it. So we wrapped it up and we blindfolded it and sort of took, I took pictures of it and then we sent them to, um, Simon Hattenstone at The Guardian and said, “we've got this statue.”

JAKE WARREN: Simon Hattenstone is possibly the only journalist who has officially interviewed Banksy face to face. In fact,  on the  very day that the drinker was being unveiled. Simon describes Banksy as “white, 28, scruffy casual. He looks like a cross between Jimmy Nail and Mike Skinner of The Streets.” Not exactly a stand out appearance. Perhaps thats how he’s managed to get away with staying anonymous for so long, you'd walk past him in the street and you wouldn't look twice. Simon turned us down for an interview with a polite ‘no, ta’. But in our research, we stumbled upon a youtube video of him explaining exactly what happened. It was unclear where the footage came from, or what it was for, but we can see Simon being interviewed in a talking head as if for a documentary. The video also includes low quality videos of Andy, wearing a balaclava, waxing lyrical. As he is wont to do…

ARCHIVE: "No, I didn’t really think about it again, then one day I got a phone call...very muffled. It was kind of a lad with a real brassy Yorkshire accent who called himself AK47 and he was like, ‘Hey, my name’s AK47. I have a picture of Bansky’s “The Drinker.” And by that time, I had not spoken to Banksy for a while and I didn’t really remember it and he was very excited about it. He said, ‘you know, ‘The Drinker,’ the sculpture, the one that was kidnapped, yeah? We want loads of money for it.’

And Bansky phoned me up. And said, ‘what’s all this about? ‘The Drinker’ being kidnapped?’ So I said, “Yeah, they want me to negotiate a salary. And he just laughed and told me he thought it was a piece of shit anyway and he'd wasted loads of money on it and he wasn't prepared to pay a release. So AK47 said ‘oh, well, tell him that we're going to burn. We’re going to set it on fire if he doesn’t pay us, but they never actually delivered. They never set it on fire. I mean, from what I’ve heard, ‘The Drinker’ is somewhere alive and kicking in an AK47 warehouse.”

GILLY: Yeah. So, it was this kind of to and fro between them and, and Banksy was as usual, quite cool about it and going, “yeah, I don't even want it. Burn it. I'm not that bothered.” And I said, “well, why don't we just get a can of petrol from you as long as you sign the petrol can?” 

JAKE WARREN: Banksy didn’t want to sign the petrol can. He ignored any of the ransom offers that Team Art Kieda gave him. Banksy didn’t seem to care, which wasn't the response that Andy had been hoping for.

ANDY LINK: But then just afterwards, I got a couple of people, my friend, Dave Bero runs “Back to Basics.” He contacted me. He knew people that knew Banksy via Inkie, I think it was at the time, was saying, “Look, you know, what do you want for it?”

To start off with, I said five grand to cover me costs or a piece. But then they get in touch every three months. But by that time, I kept putting me price up, right. They offered me 500 quid to start off with, right, for it to come and pick. It wouldn’t even cover me fucking transport that.

JAKE WARREN: Derisory offer.

ANDY LINK: Yeah. Every time it were a derisory offer. And I says, “No, I want a piece. I want a piece of work.” And they would refused to give me it.

So, eventually, when I realised they were interested to give it back, I thought, “Well, I'll do the right thing and I'll report what happened.” So, I went and reported that I'd got it to the police.

JAKE WARREN: He reported the statue to the police as being lost and that he’d picked it up, even though, as we know, he knew exactly where it was and what he intended to do with it. By doing that, It was up to the owner to physically come and claim it as their own, so the ball really was now in Banksy’s court.

At this point in the story...the thing that I keep coming back to…what does Banksy actually think about all this? Andy may be in a feud with Banksy, but does Banksy consider it a feud himself? How much of this is simply a one sided petty grudge.

MATILDA BATTERSBY: Has he had any more contact with Banksy? Because banksy tends to contact and speak to artists who he's having feuds with.

JAKE WARREN: Matilda had already told me about the feud that Banksy had gotten into with Blek Le Rat, the parisian street art who claimed Banksy had stolen his stencil style. In that case, Banksy did respond. As he did in another of his famous street artist feuds. 

MATILDA BATTERSBY: The most famous one, and I think the most credible of all the feuds is the one between Banksy and King Robo. He had been a graffiti artist for years, like all through the nineties. He was  a proper hand style graffiti artist, a train writer he had done this piece of art in the eighties, um, on Regents Canal. So right near where Coal Drops Yard is in Kings Cross. Um, and it was called Robo Incorporated, and this piece of art was across the canal, so he'd had to wade into the river in order to do it. At some point, it was painted over by Banksy. There was a sort of retaliation by King Robo on Christmas Day. I think he actually, um, got in a dinghy on Christmas Day and floated across Regents Canal and re spray painted over what Banksy had done and he did a picture of himself and he wrote King Robo. It was much more kind of classic eighties kind of bubble writing, spray paint. A little while later, Banksy apparently, I dunno if this is true, put “f-u-c” in front of “King Robo.” Um, and it became this whole thing where they kept amending the same piece of art going under the cover of darkness and playing around with it. Anyway, poor, old Robo died. And now if you go along Regents Canal, which I did the other day, actually, you can see Banksy’s painted a tribute to him.

JAKE WARREN: That we know of, Andy hasn’t heard anything directly from Banksy. It’s always whispers through his team, or through mutual friends. You'd imagine an international icon like Banksy has bigger fish to fry than a Yorkshireman with a grudge.

But there is one story that Andy told me that makes me think that Banksy, or his team, might care a little more than they’re willing to let on. 

Back in 2004, Andy made a film all about the heist called “The Banksy Job,” and he was trying to get it distributed.

ANDY LINK:  The distribution company that distributed “Exit Through The Gift Shop,” they then bought the rights to our movie and given us a good fucking price for it, for Australian distribution deal. 

JAKE WARREN: “Exit Through The Gift Shop” is a documentary Banksy directed in 2010. And crucially, he actually features in it - with his face covered and his voice distorted anyway. It’s one of the very few pieces of footage of Banksy available. 

ANDY LINK: We thought the deal had gone through and then suddenly we suddenly realized, ‘what you mean, it's cancelled. Oh no, we're not running with it.’ The owner of the company was a very good friend of the producer of my film. He says, “Basically, we got an email through from Pest Control, which said, ‘we’ve heard that you've paid to sign, do the distribution of the Banksy job. Anybody who touches that movie will not get any rights to anything else that Banksy does.’”

JAKE WARREN: So…perhaps…the power of Banksy reigns supreme. And if this is really true, it does imply that someone inside that Banksy Machine is aware of Andy…keeping tabs on him…and crucially, making sure he doesn’t speak up. My ears pricked up when I heard Pest Control - the mysterious entity that controls Banksy’s affairs and who we’ve already tried and failed to get a hold of in this series. According to Robin, Pest Control are more than notorious in the art world.

ROBIN BARTON: I think vindictive is the word I would use. And, as they are the voice of Banksy effectively, then I have to assume that Banksy is vindictive in his nature. I mean, over the years, the number of people have come to me with works that were gifted by Banksy in the early days—much like Andy Link's unsigned print—and then when they discover that Banksy won’t give them authentication for the work because he just doesn't want to, you've gotta wonder as to why. It’s very mean spirited, I think. I mean, I, I've met many, many young people, or not so young now, but they were young then who really helped Banksy in the early days and supported him, and they were gifted things for doing work for him and those same gifts, they can't now cash because he refused to authenticate them.

JAKE WARREN: It seems that Banksy was no stranger to upsetting people in the art world. But after all this, I’m still really keen to hear from the man himself. I want to know just how much he cared about all this. Was the heist just another in a long line of grievances levelled against Banksy? I mean, he offered Andy a jerry can and some matches to literally burn the statue down. Is this all just a massive wild goose chase? Even a “Who the hell is andy link” would work for me at this point…

At the moment we’ve got Andy’s word and a few scraps of circumstantial evidence. Nothing slam dunk. The fact that Banksy didn’t contact Andy like he did the other artists he’d feuded with, and the rejection of the ransom, feels like he doesn’t care. But the fact that he did engage with journalist Simon Hattenstone at the time of the heist, and the accounts from associates of Banksy at that time, lead us to believe he might. 

But there’s something else which makes me think that Banksy might have been more angry than he’s letting on. That he wanted back what was his. That he wouldn’t let Andy have the last laugh. 

Because after the statue sat in Andy’s garden for three whole years, in 2007, it mysteriously disappeared. Stolen again, it seems. But by who? 

ANDY LINK: They by all accounts set up in yellow jackets on Saturday afternoon. Slip in fence, slid it out.

JAKE WARREN: Well, and you weren't in?

ANDY LINK: No, I were on holiday in Amsterdam. Well, I weren't really on holiday. Me mate invited me over to pick up his dog that was supposed to be there and back same day. But me mate hadn't got the correct paperwork. So, we had to wait. And funnily enough, just as I were going to … we'd been knocked back from the ferry. I got a phone call from my mate saying that [Happy] Mondays were in London, and did I want to go and see him. And I says, “No, I can't. I'm stuck in Amsterdam for the weekend.” Bosh.

JAKE WARREN: So, you think-

ANDY LINK: I don't think.

JAKE WARREN: Okay. So, your claim then, is your mate sold you out?

ANDY LINK: He wasn’t a mate. Never trust a Manc, is what I say…

JAKE WARREN: Was this Banksy’s doing? Did he patiently bide his time and wait long enough for Andy to let his guard down before striking and claiming his own revenge? And how on earth did the statue resurface over 10 years after it was stolen from Andy’s garden, in a Sotherby’s auction house?

That’s all coming up next time on Who Robs A Banksy

From Podimo and Message Heard this has been Who Robs A Banksy? 

It was hosted by me, Jake Warren, and written and produced by Bea Duncan. The music was composed by Tom Biddle, with sound design by Blu Posner and production support from Harry Stott. The sound engineer is Ivan Eastely. The Story Editor and Executive Producer for Message Heard is Sandra Ferrari. The Executive Producers for Podimo are Jake Chudnow and Matt White. 

3. Freedom to Party

EPISODE 3 - Freedom To Party

ROBIN BARTON: I understand that there's a desire to sort of try and get some comment from Banksy, but it's not gonna happen. 

JAKE WARREN: Never?

ROBIN BARTON: Not unless you pin him up against a wall and threaten him with violence.

JAKE WARREN: Not, not even a sort of, you know, three sentences on an email…

ROBIN BARTON: No, no, because what? What's in it for Banksy? I mean, Banksy’s a notoriously selfish individual and self-serving and giving someone like Andy Link anything…why? I mean, the scale of ego that Andy portrays is entirely on a different level than what Banksy requires. I mean for Banksy to remain Banksy, it takes some doing. For Andy Link to be Andy Link ,it just takes getting up and out of bed. 

JAKE WARREN: That's, uh, that's, that's quite an uncharitable way of describing…

ROBIN BARTON: I'm an uncharitable person and he knows it as well. I warned him.

JAKE WARREN: I’m sure you remember that voice. That’s Robin Barton, the art dealer who specialises in the weird world of Banksy’s. And what he said really stuck with me.  Not Robin admitting that he’s an uncharitable person. I think he quite enjoyed making that crystal clear in the time we spoke together. No. “Banksy’s a notoriously selfish individual.” 

ROBIN BARTON: Banksy’s a notoriously selfish individual.

JAKE WARREN: When I started out making this podcast, I knew I’d be diving head first into the wild world of Andy Link. I knew I'd have explore rabbit hole after rabbit hole in an attempt to find out his true motivations for kidnapping a Banksy statue. But what I didn’t realise, was that on this journey I’d actually start to uncover a new side to the world’s best known anonymous street artist. A potentially murkier side.

I’m Jake Warren and From Message Heard and Podimo, this is Who Robs A Banksy?

As we dig deep into every nook and cranny of Andy Link’s life, both the good and the bad, it seems only fair that we also take a proper look at Banksy. Now, I know what you may be thinking, how the hell do you do that with the whole anonymous thing? I mean he is quite literally one of the world's best kept secrets.

But his motivations play a key part to this story. Because really, why was he so reluctant to sign that print all the way back in 2004? And just what does he think about being robbed in a daring daytime heist? If he didn't hate Andy before, he must really hate the bloke now, surely. Before diving into the world of street art, I had a pretty positive feeling about Banksy in truth. It’s kind of exciting when you hear he’s done a new piece of graffiti, and generally I believed him and Andy had some similarities. I mean, they've both made a career of sticking two fingers up at the establishment.

Everyone knows that Banksy's art attacks the privileged and the powerful, from politicians to the police, and has themes of revolution and subversion running throughout it. And at its core - graffiti, an art form that's entire premise is based on both being illegal and anonymous. 

And I think it’s quite clear already how Andy feels about rules and authority. So our story does feel quite balanced - here are two artists raging against the machine with their own brand of resistance. Case closed right?

My first red flag came from Andy. 

ANDY LINK: I won’t say he's a fraud. What I will say is he just does anything that's good for him. I don't think he believes in as in the cause as much as he says.

JAKE WARREN: Ok, so Andy hates Banksy. This comes as no real surprise. After all, this is a man who he’s held a grudge against the artist for nearly 20 years.

ANDY LINK: And I know for a fact he's really let a lot of people down over the years who've done work for him - refused to give him providence for the works he's done and been really nasty. 

JAKE WARREN: I didn’t take too much notice of the accusation from Andy that Banksy has let people down. To be honest, I thought he was mostly talking about himself and his refused signature. But the more I spoke to people, in the art world and even those who used to be close to Banksy, the less it seemed that it was just sour grapes from Andy.

Gilly, Andy’s associate,  actually used to work for Bansky as his photographer. And while I was excited to get one degree of separation closer to hearing from Banksy himself, I was gutted because Gilly hasn’t spoken to Bansky for a while. In fact, it seems a lot of his old crew haven’t.

GILLY: I mean, he cut himself off from lots of people, like, like in, you know, lots of people in, in the graffiti world Kind of lost touch with him. It was like, you know, I'm famous now and I'm, I don't want anything to do with anyone. Even the people who put him where he is and the people who he stole his ideas from.back i

JAKE WARREN: There it was again - the claim that Banksy has taken ideas from other people. And actually, when we spoke to Matilda Battersby, former arts editor of The Independent, it turned out one of these claims of idea theft has been well documented. 

MATILDA BATTERSBY:  I've met Xavier Prou, who's Blek Le Rat.

JAKE WARREN: Blek Le Rat, known as the father of stencil graffiti, is particularly famous for his stencilled rats. The style is unmistakably similar to Banksy’s. 

MATILDA BATTERSBY: He showed me emails from Banksy, you know, conversations they'd had about art and about the sort of derivation of this style, but essentially Xavier Prou developed because he had been in Italy as a child. He's a little bit older. I think he's 71 and he'd seen the stencils of Mussolini on the walls in Italy, and he'd sort of combined this in his head with the kind of graffiti style that was coming out of New York in the 80’s. And you know, Banksy at one point, I think he said in one of the biographies, I think it was the unauthorised biography, so I don't know if it's true, but he said that everything that he's done, he looks at and sees that, Blek Le Rat did 20 years earlier. There's animosity between them or there has been because they got into a bit of a fight on over email. 

JAKE WARREN: And one of them gets the credit.

MATILDA BATTERSBY: And one of them is hugely wealthy.

JAKE WARREN: It’s hard to say where the line between inspiration and intellectual theft is. But the claims kept coming thick and fast. And becoming more serious each time I spoke to someone new.

WAYNE ANTHONY: Obviously Banksy doesn't make any of his art, you know, he's got a band of people that produce his art for him. 

JAKE WARREN: Wayne Anthony is someone who is respected in the street art world, being the cofounder of London Street-Art Design Magazine. And he even mentioned one piece of Banksy art that we’re particularly interested in: The infamous “Drinker” statue.

WAYNE ANTHONY: Even in the statue, in the making of that statue, it, we come to find out that it wasn't by the person who, who banksy, he paid to do it. I mean, even that. The story gets twisted all the time and it turned out it was these two black guys, these two twins who hardly got paid any money. You know, I have nothing against Banksy in any way, shape or form. I think what he’s done is amazing and the way that he helps artists is amazing, but our boy AK47, you know, he’s a disruptive force. 

JAKE WARREN: So Banksy isn't just taking inspiration from other artists - in some instances, there are claims that he’s not even making the art himself, which, when it comes to “The Drinker,” is especially interesting. Who owns a statue that wasn’t even made by the artist to begin with? It all plays into the wider question that I’m really interested in. How genuinely anti-establishment is Banksy really?

GILLY: He's the most establishment figure I can think of. But everyone's still say, “oh, he's done a rat on a wall in, you know, Kiev or something.” It's like, oh wow.

JAKE WARREN: The more I got stuck into this story, the more interested I was becoming in the character of Banksy. His anonymity, while a tool to keep his identity hidden, is also useful in batting any difficult questions or scrutiny away. People really do love a masked crusader, and for Banksy this means he can simply do whatever he wants.

GILLY: He's not anti-establishment anymore, is he? But he's still perceived as, and he's also perceived as a mythical figure where if anybody wanted to find out who he was and publish pictures of him and name him, they would do it. But the media are completely complicit in the idea of having this kind of Robin Hood type figure. Or Robin Somebody.

JAKE WARREN: But surprisingly, Andy was one of the first people to be a bit generous to Banksy.

ANDY LINK: You can't really say it's him, it's his machine behind. You've got to remember behind Banksy, he's got a huge machine now.

JAKE WARREN: It’s true. The mysterious pest control who we’ve tried with numerous attempts to contact are known to run Banksy’s affairs. And we have no idea of just how large the organisation is, or who exactly is in charge. But beyond Pest Control, there’s no way of knowing who is really calling Banksy’s shots. 

Robin was also sceptical about Banksy’s anti-establishment claims, particularly in relation to his surprising links to some of London’s most prestigious auction houses like Sotheby’s.

ROBIN BARTON: It's, it's a difficult one. I mean, I would think he would like to see himself outside of the establishment still, but holding hands with Sotheby's doesn't make a very good picture really for a street artist. 

JAKE WARREN: No. Yes, I mean that’s about as establishment as it gets, isn’t it?

ROBIN BARTON: Yeah. And yeah with the girl with balloon stunt - the shredded girl with balloon - what you’re looking at there is obviously a collaboration between the auction house and the artist.

JAKE WARREN: That was slightly too uh, too perfect. Too true, right?

ROBIN BARTON: Yeah. Just a, just a little bit trite as well.

JAKE WARREN: This stunt Robin is referring to involved one of Banksy’s most recognisable prints, “Girl With Balloon,” which was up for Auction at Sotheby’s. After being sold for over one million quid to an unnamed telephone bidder, the print then immediately began to be shredded by a secret contraption built into its frame. It has since gone on to sell for the ridiculous sum of over 18 million great british pounds under the new title, “Love is in the Bin,” a record for the artist. But Robin wasn’t sure.

JAKE WARREN: Although I guess the person that bought it, didn't it immediately go up in ridiculous amount in value because of that stunt.

ROBIN BARTON: What? You think someone actually bought it?

JAKE WARREN: Oh, maybe not. 

ROBIN BARTON: I mean, you have to understand with auction houses that they are so opaque and murky. I mean, there's no way of knowing whether anyone's ever spent that kind of money on anything.

JAKE WARREN: Oh, so it's, it's all a game of smoke and mirrors.

ROBIN BARTON: It's all a game of smoke mirrors.

JAKE WARREN: All this got me thinking. Who’s the real anti-establishment character in this story? Banksy: the subversive street art pioneer and darling of Sotheby’s? Or Andy: the illegal rave planning, fetish party leading, football-hooligan Yorkshireman? 

Before Andy was AK47 the artist, he lived many lives. He was drawn to anything that kicked back against the system. Politicians, the police, and the media - they were all fair game. It’s the same perception we have of Banksy. We know Andy has this knack of finding a way to insert himself in the middle of every subculture going. It’s a testament to the kind of person he is - who doesn’t take no for an answer and who tries anything once, even high profile art theft.

Well, most people who’ve heard of Banksy know about his anti-establishment image. So it’s only fair to give you a balanced view - I think it’s time to examine Linky’s own personal brand of anti-establishment to try and get a clearer picture of just who we’re dealing with. 

GILLY: There's no boundaries for him anywhere. He doesn't know what the meaning of the word boundary is.

JAKE WARREN: And the first stop on this journey through Andy’s life? Well, perhaps it’s one of the more unusual scenes he found himself entangled in.

ANDY LINK: “All our people out there, let’s show them in straight land what we can 

do and what we’re all about. Thanks a lot and let’s have it.”

JAKE WARREN: The fetish scene has long been a staple of British underground culture. One of the largest nights, Torture Garden, was started in the 90’s. Picture dark rooms, loud tunes, leather, latex, and lots of flesh.

But fetish and BDSM were still taboo at this time, and Torture Garden venues were often closed or their events cancelled. There were even tabloid exposés in the 90 with headlines like “Naughty Nights in the garden”.

Subversive, anti establishment, and against the grain of society? Sign Andy up. He saw the opportunity and began his own fetish nights under the moniker of “Finger in a Matchbox International.”

ANDY LINK: “Hi my name’s Andy Link. This is “Mostly Harmless.” Let me show you around. This is my favourite piece, had this made for me a while ago. It’s the most awesome piece of machinery you’ve seen. As you can see, it has foot flags where you strap people on. Later on, we’ll probably get somebody tied on there to show you. And that does the business. Follow me.”

ANDY LINK: He even made his way into the pornography industry, producing, distributing and performing in what Andy called “decent amateur english porn” under the company Northern Lad Productions. 

HOST: “What’s your stage name, Andy?” 

ANDY LINK: “Bobby Tupper.”

JAKE WARREN: For Andy, the boundaries of right and wrong are sometimes blurred. The more I dug into his many past lives, the more conflicted I found myself becoming. The fetish side of Andy was something that surprised me - there were moments that he seemed genuinely progressive, at a time when sexuality was still shrouded in societal shame.

ANDY LINK: “In our club we ask you to abide by the two great rules. Gentleman, do not touch unless invited and always show respect to all people at all times. We follow it by ladies, if you any problems with unwanted advances, please inform our security who will deal with this matter swiftly.”

JAKE WARREN: But it started to feel like every time I saw something I liked, I’d pretty immediately find something I didn’t. As we scoured the old school VHS tapes that Andy had brought in, there was a particularly uncomfortable moment when Andy was in the audience of “Trisha,” a classic British salacious talk show from the early 2000’s. The guests are a 16-year-old girl who wants to get into glamour modelling, and her mother. Andy was in the audience, as he so often is in these VHS’s.

ANDY LINK: “Can I ask her, is this an idea you want to take up for a full time career? Yeah. Is the escorting on the agenda or is it modelling and then follow it up?”

HOST: “Who is this question from Claire?”

ANDY LINK: “From to the girl, to the young girl.”

HOST: “To Claire?”

ANDY LINK: “Yeah.”

GIRL: “No, I don’t want to do any escort work. Nothing like that.”

ANDY LINK: “You want to do you’d like to do move on to modelling? So, do modelling first and then do stripper grams and stuff like that.”

GIRL: “Yeah, but I think whatever…”

HOST: “Why do you ask?”

ANDY LINK: “Well, I just work in the industry that’s all.”

HOST: “And what do you do?”

ANDY LINK: “I run an agency, make movies.”

HOST: “What sort of movies?”

ANDY LINK: “Adult movies.”

JAKE WARREN: He says you have to be 18 to be part of the adult industry. And yet…

ANDY LINK: “If you are serious and you want to do modelling, I can offer you…”

CROWD: [Boos] 

HOST: “She’s 16!”

GIRL: “You can shut up. You can shut up because it ain’t up to you, so you can shut up.”

ANDY LINK: “I can offer you legitimate modelling with a top agency working.”

HOST: “At 16?”

ANDY LINK: “At 16, I can guarantee you will be in a newspaper within one week topless.”

HOST: “And what will she be looking like?”

ANDY LINK: “Topless.”

HOST: “Topless?”

ANDY LINK: “Topless.”

JAKE WARREN: It wasn’t until 2003 that the age of consent for topless modelling was raised to 18. But just because something is legal, that doesn’t necessarily make it right. It’s pretty clear to me, and, judging by the cries of outrage, equally clear to the members of the audience, that what Andy is suggesting is quite shocking. And while he was insistent in other tapes he was in the industry for the love of it…

ANDY LINK: “And I’m not in it for the money. If i were in it for the money, I’d get a real job.”

JAKE WARREN: That could have been more spin.

HOST:  “Would you make any money out of this?”

ANDY LINK: “Would I make any money out of it?”

HOST: “Yes. Yes.”

ANDY LINK: “I would make a small commission of what you get. Well, If I’m going to put work - sort her out with work, a small managerial fee is what is acceptable.”

JAKE WARREN: I was really trying to weigh up my opinion of Andy with the things I was hearing and seeing. HIs story is an interesting one, and one definitely worth telling, but I wasn’t sure where I stood on some of the things he’d got up to in his past. While plenty of it could be put down as a result of his circumstances, I wasn’t sure if that excused any of it. If there is such a thing as a moral line, I don't think Andy has any reservations about occasionally straying over it.

I found it interesting that many of the groups that Andy wound up being a part of, were subversive, anti-establishment, and even illegal. It almost felt intentional that so many of his endeavours were things that were frowned upon in everyday life, and targeted by the media. At the time he was dipping his toes into fetish, the tabloids were desperately trying to vilify those involved. And Andy was involved with another community who in the 80’s and 90’s were fighting their own desperate battle against their negative portrayal in the media and intense demonisation by politicians…the illegal rave scene.

NEWS REPORT: “We’re telling you about gigantic outdoor raves happening across the region almost every weekend. Sometimes they ended in confrontations with the police after residents complained about deafening music in the small hours of the morning. This summer, all has been quiet. Too quiet, say party organisers, who accuse the police of using new legislation to try to stamp out the craze all together.”

JAKE WARREN: It was actually, perhaps surprisingly, quite a natural progression for those involved with football hooliganism. 

GILLY: It was like when acid house came along and that sort of, there was a, an article in The Face that “Did Acid house kill the football hooligan?” It kind of did, you know. A few years before that, those are the people you beat up. Then all of a sudden you're all together hugging each other in a club. 

JAKE WARREN: Wayne Anthony has known Andy for over 20 years. They met in the street art world, but Wayne was also involved in setting up raves during the late 80’s. 

WAYNE ANTHONY: The backdrop of parties when I started doing them was that there was no parties. There was, there was the pubs, clubs, everything shut at 2:00 AM. London Town would shut down and that would be it. And you know, you'd have to go home and normally, you know, you do make your own parties, but normally everybody went home separately.

JAKE WARREN: Andy was keen to get a piece of the action. And the DJ friend of Andy’s, Alistair Cooke, and his pal Huggy gave him the opportunity. 

ANDY LINK: “Hey Linky, you know how to sort things out. I want to do a rave, I've got a venue, I've got these woods. Can you help me sort it out? You know logistics of how it works, getting equipments and that.’ And I went, ‘Eh, I suppose so. It's not hard.’”

JAKE WARREN: Andy had no idea what he was about to get himself mixed up in. Ever the man with a plan, he found a different venue, underneath a motorway bridge, and called the rave “Finger in a matchbox” - a homage to his former fetish nights. But, just like his football hooliganism, this is where Andy’s true anti-establishment spirit comes in.

ANDY LINK: When I do anything, I like to do it old school. 

JAKE WARREN: He wasn’t just doing something illegal for the sake of it. There was an actual message underpinning it all.

ANDY LINK: So again, it was quite a strong political, if you want to call it political, but a social group that were fighting for our, against the, I always like to kick against the system. 

JAKE WARREN: "There’s no such thing as society,” as ex prime minister Margaret Thatcher famously said. And up and down the country, people were finding ways to counter that notion through creating their own sense of community.

WAYNE ANTHONY: She had privatised a lot of industries and that privatisation actually, you know, a lot of people lost their jobs. A lot of people lost their livelihoods. So there were a lot of empty warehouses in London with broken dreams, you know.

JAKE WARREN: Thatcher was elected for a third consecutive term in 1987. Those who didn’t support her were feeling pretty lost, disillusioned - and more than that, you couldn't even find solace in nightlife as the laws at the time saw most pubs and clubs closing earlier than ever. 

But it just so happened that around that same time, a music revolution was beginning - electronic music from the clubs of mid-western USA made its way across the pond to the UK. 

At the start of 1987, the absolute classic “Jack Your Body” by Steve Silk Hurley became the UK’s first ever house music number one, paving the way for the music genre of acid house to make its way into mainstream consciousness. This also came hand in hand with the rise of club drugs like acid and MDMA, despite the government, police, and media peddling intense propaganda campaigns against them. The youth of Thatcher’s Britain needed a form of escapism even just for a few hours - and acid house and pills became the vehicle for that escape.

The summer of 1989 saw what was dubbed the second summer of love, with outdoor raves and parties exploding up and down the newly built M25. The kids were using sophisticated methods of evading police - not releasing venues until the last minute, temporary phones to connect with each other, and requiring passwords for information. 

But this was exactly the sort of thing overly Conservative governments tend to hate - groups of like-minded young people coming together, building communities, enjoying themselves in ways they couldn't directly control or even really truly understand, so they began to hit back. 

WAYNE ANTHONY: Margaret Thatcher, she actually created or formed a new unit and this unit was called the “Police Pay Party” unit. And they, what they also did was, for the first time in British history, they networked computers all around the country. 

You know, It was the first time they'd ever done it. And they networked these computers all around the country, they're all connected to a central database. And anybody that got caught around parties, in parties or wherever, you know, you could be 10 miles within the, you know, parameters of a party and they would take your name and address and you would go in this central database. 

JAKE WARREN: As well as the Pay Party Unit, by 1990, the UK had passed the Entertainment Act. Fines of up to 20,000 could be imposed on the organisers of illegal raves. And section 63 of the 1994 Criminal justice Act really put the nail in rave’s coffin.

It gave the police the power to shut down events featuring music of “a succession of repetitive beats.” I know, right. It sounds like some one of those “Ye Olde English” antiquated laws, but misappropriated for use in the 1990s.

You can really see why Andy was drawn to all of this. Maybe the police crackdown even spurred him on. But by 1990, when he was planning his own rave, Andy even knew that the police were aware of what he was planning - and his crew were beginning to lose their bottle.

ANDY LINK: People can say what they want about me, but I'm a man of me word. If I say that something's going to happen, I'm going to do it. And I will do it and I'm like, “you know what? I ain't pulling out.” And Luke says to me, says, “but you'll get nicked.” I says, “well, so fucking what?” I'm not letting people down, I have a lot of thousands of people I know were coming down from all over the place. And this was before we had social media to say we’re cancelled. There was no way I could cancel it. 

JAKE WARREN: I think you’ll agree that Andy probably should’ve canned the event. But as he says, he’s a man of his word. And so while his fellow organisers scarpered, on 16th of June 1990, Andy along with a convoy of cars headed off to “Finger in a Matchbox.”

JAKE WARREN: So, what happened then on the night?

ANDY LINK: Well, it got out of control because it’s typical. You know, somebody lets you down, and that's what happened. My fucking crew let me down. But it still went down. It was still a massive party. It made the national news around … well, it made the international news. I had people contacting me from Australia that seen it on Sky News, “Biggest bust in Manchester City, police raid.” 

JAKE WARREN: So, how many people were there? 

ANDY LINK: About two and a half thousand, maybe. 

JAKE WARREN: It turns out they were only able to play about 1 and a half songs. DJ Huggy managed to kickstart the event with “Hardcore Uproar” by Together, but just a few beats into his next track, the police were beginning to loom over the horizon. The music cut out. 

In the recording, you can hear the rabble of those who weren’t yet arrested being stopped and searched.

RAVE ARCHIVE 2: “I’ve done nothing! I’ve done nothing! Can everybody see that I’ve got no bags on me. I’ve done nothing.” 

JAKE WARREN: In the aftermath of the chaos, the papers reported 230 arrests, with another 700 more being questioned. The prisons in the surrounding area were absolutely stuffed with would-be party goers. It’s not really clear if this was just poor planning or if Andy’s crew really did let him down. But this rave is a pretty good example of Andy’s attitude to life - just give it a good go and when the dust has settled, it will either be a good result or a good story.

So, what happened to our fearless rave organiser? You’ll have to wait until the next episode to find out. Because 1990 was also an important year for another member of our story, over 200 miles away in Bristol.

For the first few years of the 90’s, Banksy was working as a freehand graffiti artist in Bristol's DryBreadz Crew. It wasn’t until 1998 that his first known large wall mural would appear - “The Mild Mild West.” Funnily enough, the mural was a response to the illegal party scene that was still on the rise. It featured a stuffed bear about to throw a molotov cocktail at a group of riot police, and is believed to be a reference to a New Year’s Eve warehouse rave in Bristol where party goers were assaulted by police attempting to break up the event.

It seems Andy and Banksy might have more common enemies than they might admit, but the pair never got to bond over their days in the illegal rave scenes, their hatred of the establishment, and their mutual love of art. Who knows? If they ever had the chance to have a chat face to face, they might have been best mates.

If Andy had let what Banksy had said to him in 2003 go…

ANDY LINK: He says, “you can fuck off your tight ass Northern. You should have bought a signed print.”

…perhaps we would be in a different situation. But one thing we know for sure to be true about Andy, he’s not one to let sleeping dogs lie. His brain started ticking over. What could he do to get his own back at Banksy? He began searching for inspiration. 

In 1999, two artists operating under the name Mad For Real visited Tracey Emin’s artwork “My Bed,” which was being shown at the Tate Britain. You might know the one: an unmade bed surrounded by vodka bottles, magazines, ash trays - it’s become the stick to beat people with of what people love to loathe about modern art. Anyway, Mad For Real went to the Tate and jumped all over poor Traceys work of art/unmade bed 

Their performance was entitled, creatively, “Two Naked Men Jump in Tracey's Bed.” Although to be clear, they only had their tops off. It was a supposed subversive interaction with a piece of public art - and something about it must’ve sparked an idea in Andy.

ANDY LINK: And I've seen a few bit of these of art terrorism and stuff like  thatand I thought that's fun that. If I do it as Linky, I'm just like, “oh yeah, fuck off Linky.” But if I do it, if I say I'm an art terrorist, I'm an artist myself, then I'm fighting them on their ground. I'm you know, I'm playing their game. They've got to play by the rules.

JAKE WARREN: So, and that's how Art Kieda was born. 

ANDY LINK: That's how Art Kieda were created. 

JAKE WARREN: Art Kieda is Andy’s art movement. 

ANDY LINK: “I am AK47, leader of the artopolitical humourist art terror group, Art Kieda.”

JAKE WARREN: Andy’s artist name AK47 has always intrigued me. But when I spoke to Andy’s long term pal Gilly, the reality of the name took me a bit by surprise. 

GILLY: Junction 47 was the turnoff for Wakefield on the M1 and that sort of was like Art Kidnap. It was Art Kidnap originally. So we were playing around with loads of names and Art Kidnap 47 was something to do with like Wakefield, Art Kidnap. And then Art Kieda came a lot later. 

JAKE WARREN: I didn’t know that Junction 47 was the turn after Wakefield. 

JAKE WARREN: So they came up with a manifesto for their new movement. Part of which read: "We are the new movement in artistic and political satire. Professional pisstakers on a global level.” Andy had become an art terrorist and Banksy was his target. The world had been officially warned.

So to really take the piss out of Banksy, Andy needed to do something big. Spray over some of his works? Cut them out of a wall? That would all be too obvious, not dramatic enough. And essentially, petty vandalism....But all it took was for Andy to get a tip off from one of Banksy’s inner circle for the first domino to fall into place. 

ANDY LINK: He said to me, “Oh look, we've just put a new piece out.” He says, “we put it on the Westway to start, but he didn't like it there. Nobody fucking noticed it.” He says, “so, we've moved it to just at back of Tottenham Court Road there.”

JAKE WARREN: And so Andy started setting a plan in motion.

ANDY LINK: And I just thought, “oh, I'll get him with that that that seems a good way to get me own back on him.” Because that's quite easy if you can hire a fucking lorry, which I've got connections, you know, all that kind of stuff. Logistics is one of my fortes.

JAKE WARREN: So, once you decided that was the thing, who did you assemble to help you do it? Because like you said, “I've got contacts, can get a lorry.” Who did you think, “this is my crack team. They're going to help to do this.”

ANDY LINK: Yeah. My mate called Rob. My mate called Rob who’s….he’s what you’d call a cardboard gangster, really. But yeah, he’s fun to be around. So, I chose Rob as my number two. 

JAKE WARREN: We tried to speak to Rob for this series. But between our first and second contact with him, he and Andy seemingly had a big falling out. He asked us to remind Andy who his real friends were. 

JAKE WARREN: So, from deciding to do it, to doing it, the kidnap didn't take that much? Just turn up?

ANDY LINK: No, just if you know the right people, you can get a team together like that.

JAKE WARREN: So, how long was it before you decided to do it, to you actually doing it?

ANDY LINK: About three days.

JAKE WARREN: Wow.

ANDY LINK: Because simple, we didn't know how long it was going to be there. We thought somebody else might have it away. Somebody might steal it and we didn't want anybody to steal it.

JAKE WARREN: So, 72 hours from deciding to doing it, to doing it. 24 hours before or sort of the day, how are you feeling that day?

ANDY LINK: Nervous as fuck.

JAKE WARREN: Really?

ANDY LINK: Yeah. Because well, no, no … excited more than nervous, you know what I mean? I've never even seen it. I didn't even go down on a reconnaissance of it. I knew where it was and I thought I'll just ... I just did it. I do things. I'm very spontaneous.

JAKE WARREN: Andy tries, and tries hard, at everything he turns his mind to. But unfortunately, like his rave, he doesn’t always succeed. I mean, come on. Can you really just show up in central London in the middle of the day with a truck and remove a statue by one of the most famous street artists in the world? 

That’s coming up next time on Who Robs A Banksy?

From Podimo and Message Heard this has been Who Robs A Banksy? It was hosted by me, Jake Warren, and written and produced by Bea Duncan. The music was composed by Tom Biddle, with production support from Harry Stott, sound engineered by Ivan Eastley. The Story Editor and Executive Producer for Message Heard is Sandra Ferrari. The Executive Producers for Podimo are Jake Chudnow and Matt White.

2. The Signature

EPISODE 2 - The Signature 

JAKE WARREN: In 2003, a year before the infamous heist took place, Andy was beginning to dip his toes into a new world for him - art. He was chatting to one of his mates he knew from the illegal rave community, a world that he had elbowed his way into, and became a big part of in the 1990’s. And this mate happened to have just stumbled upon one of the 21st century’s biggest new underground artists - which he believed was their next genuine golden goose.

ANDY LINK: He says, “But I have just bought a print by this guy.” He says “I think he's going to be somewhat big.” A guy called Banksy. “Ooh, what's that all about?” Funny enough, my rave community, we were involved in that as well. It was almost same family.

JAKE WARREN: So you knew people from the rave community that you were very much your people. 

ANDY LINK: Yeah. 

JAKE WARREN: That knew Banksy?

ANDY LINK: Well, they knew Banksy or they were into Banksy. They'd be going to Banksy shows because he was on that underground culture. 

JAKE WARREN: But that's also, I guess, the beginning of the feud. 

ANDY LINK: Well, yeah. 

JAKE WARREN: When Banksy became your nemesis, right, or you became Banksy’s nemesis.

ANDY LINK: I'm more Banksy’s nemesis than he's mine, I’d like to think. 

JAKE WARREN: What happened? 

ANDY LINK: I went to the ghetto sale in Covent Garden, I think it was 2003, and bought the print “Flying Copper.”

“Flying Copper” features an image of an armed policeman with a cartoon smiley face and angel wings. It’s typical of Banksy’s known style - the dominating figure of authority, with a submachine gun in hand which is offset by a childish cartoon face. It was both a nod to acid house and the rave scenes Andy had also been a part of. 

At the time, Andy had the choice of buying 2 different versions of the print. A signed one, for 150 quid or an unsigned one at half the price for 75. One thing we know about Andy by now is he’s nothing if not well connected. And it turned out, he only had a few degrees of separation from the artist Banksy himself. In fact, he knew one of Banksy’s crew. So, he bought an unsigned print, and asked his contact if he could give it to Banksy to sign for him. An innocent enough request on the surface, but what happened next would alter the course of Andy’s life for the next two decades.

ANDY LINK:  I said, “have you asked him?” I kept pestering him. He says, “yeah.” He says, “you can fuck off your tight ass Northern. You should have bought a signed print.” 

JAKE WARREN: Ooh. 

ANDY LINK: That’s it?

JAKE WARREN: I’m Jake Warren and from Podimo and Message Heard, this is Who Robs A Banksy?

Andy is adamant it had nothing to do with money. 

ANDY LINK: If I were doing it for financial reasons, fine, but so what? I didn't give a fuck because nobody knew these 75 print were going to be worth what they are today. Nobody. And so, 75 quid or 150 quid for fucking sake of a signature, yeah. And I thought, well, because he's a mate of a mate, he'll be able to sign “nice one Linky.” That's all I wanted. Sign it “nice one Linky -Banksy”. But he took offense. He thought I was doing it for the finances.  And that's when I went, you know what, this ain't right. Something wrong with this. If you're a fucking artist and one of your mates’s mates goes and buys a piece, gosh, you'll sign it for him. Why wouldn't you? 

JAKE WARREN: But the truth is, what was a £75 price difference between the two prints back in 2003, has got just slightly wider. According to myartbroker.com, an unsigned version of Flying Copper now has an estimated value of £24,000 - £34,000. Meanwhile, a signed version can go for anything between £30,000 to £90,000. With the beauty of hindsight what was a mere 75 quid saving has become a near 60 grand mistake. Yep, I reckon you'd be fuming too.

But Andy insists that all he was after was a personalised message, which, in the art world, might actually devalue the print rather than add to it. In Andy’s mind this was bigger than money. It was a favour denied and a personal shunning. And in the end, Andy ended up with nothing but a bruised ego. 

ROSALIA FERRARA: He's got a big heart has Andy. He'd do anything for you. Yeah, he's crazy. He's mad in a good way. But if you crossed him, he'd be like, cut you off.

JAKE WARREN: Rosalia has known Andy for over 20 years, so knows all too well how this might’ve affected him. 

ROSALIA FERRARA: And he probably just thought, “fuck you.” And yeah, kind of took any opportunity to start this feud. But I mean, Banksy could have signed it, but he chose not.

JAKE WARREN: So this was the start of the feud that Andy has spent the last 2 decades waging. You may well be thinking - “that’s it? Banksy didn’t sign your print and you think a measured response is to kidnap one of his statues in broad daylight?” It feels like, maybe, just a teeny tiny bit of an overreaction. But as I got to know him, I did really believe Andy when he said it wasn’t about the money for him.

ROSALIA FERRARA: I mean, he was offended. He was offended. He was put out, you know, it doesn't cost anybody to ever to, to sign something. But, you know, like I say, he'd do anything for you, but yeah, if, I think if you double crossed him, he'd, he'd have something to say about it or do about it.

JAKE WARREN: Each time I’ve spoken to Andy, the story of what Banksy allegedly said to him changes a little. 

JAKE WARREN: Obviously, we talked a little bit about before, kind of the motivation of Banksy basically calling you a cheap northern bastard when you you know-

ANDY LINK: I think it was a C word.

JAKE WARREN: But the core essence is always the same. Really, it all comes down to one thing - respect. 

What matters is that, when you break it down, Banksy personally insulted Andy’s character, and brought up negative stereotypes that he’s has thrown in his face his whole life.

MATILDA BATTERSBY: If the rumours that Banksy is THIS sort of well to do, well-educated, middle class character. And most of the people who were making a splash at the time in Street art weren't like that. They were working class, you know, it was a very different kind of hand style graffiti kind of story that they'd struggled with, then there might be a bit of class warfare as much as anything else. 

JAKE WARREN: This is an interesting point to bring into this story. We don’t know much about Banksy - the whole being anonymous thing makes that tricky. But as Matilda says, there are still rumours about his upbringing. And so, Banksy bringing up Andy’s proud Northern roots in such a disparaging way, would certainly have stirred something in him. 

Andy’s hustling, his childhood, his involvement in all these iconic subcultures, and really, his motivation can be boiled down to something that I’m sure lots of us will relate to. Sometimes, someone just really pisses you off. And how many times have you wished you could get your own back? Well, Andy is the kind of person who doesn't just fantasise about it, he gets off his arse and does it.

His childhood and upbringing were potentially, if we believe the rumours, pretty contrasting to that of Banksy. And so to understand this relationship between Andy and Banksy, we need to go back to 1961, the year Andy was born. 

ANDY LINK: I’m son of a lock-keeper. My father worked for British Waterways and here’s the thing with me, I'm on the cusp of everything. I'm never one nor the other. Where we lived was classed as Dewsbury, but I went to schools in Ossett, which is part of Wakefield. So, I could only have a doctor in Dewsbury, which were uphills. It was just very difficult and odd. But we lived in the middle of what was the biggest goods yard, railway yard in Europe, a place called Healey Mills, which was colossal railway yard. And we moved there when I was three-years-old.  I used to go to school, like to walk a mile and a half up a hill and I'd get halfway up the hill and come out of the smog. So, I lived in soot for a lot of time in my childhood. It was literally, you could stand at the top of my school and look down the big hill and you could see this big fog as it followed the river. But it would also full of, you know, God knows what comes out them factories. But yeah, it was definitely a scene from a Lowry. 

JAKE WARREN: By the time Andy was a young kid, England was in the midst of political and social upheaval. The North of England in particular had been the birthplace of the industrial revolution - it’s where most of the factories, coal mines and thick smog, was so well captured on canvas by the artist L.S. Lowry who Andy just mentioned.

But by the late 60’s, a different energy culture based on cheap imports from abroad saw coal production in the UK go into freefall. The mines in the north of England were starting to close, tearing apart communities and leaving thousands upon thousands of Northerners out of a job and on the scrap heap themselves.

The 70s up north were even even worse. By 1972, the miners were on an official strike for the first time since 1926. In 1974 a 3-day working week was in effect. Inflation was huge and for normal working class families it was an extraordinarily tough existence to just get by.

ANDY LINK: My parents weren't good parents, we'll put it that way.  My sister was seven years older than me and she used to bully me rotten. So, I never felt part of anything. I also, where we lived, the nearest friend was over a mile away.

JAKE WARREN: Isolating for a kid. 

ANDY LINK: Yeah. It was like nobody could hear me scream. That was my thing. When I got a kicking, nobody could hear it. No matter how much I cried. 

JAKE WARREN: Hearing about Andy’s childhood made me see him in a new light. I’d met him a few times by this point, and he’d always come across as strong, positive and resourceful. He wasn’t keen to dig toO deep into his family life, but from what he told me, I felt he was holding back. Even this small glimpse was tough to hear.

So Andy grew up perhaps feeling inadequate, unwanted even, and living in an area with very few opportunities to really make something of himself. And then in 1979, Margaret Thatcher, one of the most polarising figures in British politics was elected prime minister of the United Kingdom. She’d be elected a further two times, and it's impossible to understate the huge effect 'Thatcherism' would have over this country for the next 11 years. But Andy, by now 17, has other things to worry about. He’s about to get thrown out of home by his parents.

JAKE WARREN: Why did they throw you out? 

ANDY LINK: I was at court for criminal damage, graffiti in a police cell. We used to have this, we’d call it a mushroom. It was like a shelter in the middle of the little Ossett town, since it’s a small village. And I graffiti-ed it. I put “Linky was here,” right. As you do, my early graff years. 

JAKE WARREN: Classic. 

ANDY LINK: They arrested me and I denied knowledge of it. Anyway, they held me in the cells. Well, and it was a proper Victorian police station. The whole plaster and the bars on the window. It was disgrace.  And so, I decided, “Fuck you, if you're nicking me for it.” So, I did the whole, down to the plaster, took the plaster back to the brickwork. 

JAKE WARREN: Wow. 

ANDY LINK: So, I caused that. Couldn't really plead not guilty to all. So, that made the calendar, our local north or whatever, the local news at six o'clock. And it came over as Eric Link. My name’s Eric Andrew and my parent’s never used the Eric because it was my father’s name, and cost me, that went fucking mental…So yeah, that’s why I got thrown out at the 17, 18 – 17, I think.

JAKE WARREN: So Andy left home and decided to strike out on his own. But as the old saying goes, “you can take the man out of Yorkshire, but you can't take the Yorkshire out the man,” and despite a difficult upbringing, he still always remained proud of where he's from, Wakefield - affectionately known as 'Shakey Wakey.’

GILLY: Everyone from Wakefield's mental, so it's on a ley line with Reykjavik, and somewhere in sort of South America. It's like the the maddest place in the world. And everybody, everybody in, everybody from Wakefield is mental. Um, they're so proud of their city, their town or whatever even it is. 

JAKE WARREN: Gilly is a long term friend of Andy’s. Or Linky, as Gilly mostly calls him. 

GILLY: Can you describe Linky in a sentence? He's a force of nature, really and that's a bit of a cliche description of anyone, but when you meet him, you don't forget him. You can see the horror on people's faces when, when they first encounter him and then slowly that melts and there's something quite charismatic about him, but not in a charming way. There's something that kind of like people can't resist. 

JAKE WARREN: When we asked Gilly what he did, as well as mentioning his journalism and photography, he summed himself up as:

GILLY: General Operational’s coordinator for Linky and his art thievery.

JAKE WARREN: But Gilly and Andy met long before the world of art heists. They got to know each other over 30 years ago, as fans of the same football team. 

GILLY: I was a Bradford White. He was a Wakefield White. We used to kind of run together or stand together depending on who we were fighting.

JAKE WARREN: Leeds United, a football team based in, rather unsurprisingly, the major northern  city of Leeds, are colloquially known as ‘the whites’ because they play in an all-white kit. And they’re renowned for having some of the most passionate, devoted fans in the UK. In the 70s they were living through a golden era. They won countless trophies under manager Don Revie, as their famously rough style of play reflected their hard as nails supporters on the pitch. You can see why someone like Andy would be enamoured. 

Throughout the VHS tapes that Andy gave us, Leeds United comes up again and again. In the documentary “Swingers,” for instance, about Andy’s open relationship with his ex wife Fiona, the cameras catch a fight between the two. 

ANDY LINK: Bastards. Monday night and won 3 nil. Bastards.

FIONA: You care so much about our relationship.

ANDY LINK: Oh, our relationship is equally important

FIONA: Football always comes first

ANDY LINK: I always told you that when we first got together. I told you that you know, no matter what, no matter what we go through, don’t ever try to come between me and Leeds because at the end of the day, I’ve loved Leeds since the day I was born and I’ll love Leeds to the day I die. There’s no matter. They will always come first. If you ever ask me to make a decision - you or Leeds, I would always choose Leeds. Deliberately on the fact that, you know, because you’re asking for that choice.

FIONA: Yes love. You can get down off your soapbox. 

ANDY LINK: I’m not on me soap box.

FIONA: You are. You are. Pontificating about football, aren’t you?

ANDY LINK: It’s more important than our relationship. Yes.

JAKE WARREN: In another clip, Andy and Fiona are being interviewed in a fetish club. He’s in a short-sleeved top which, upon closer inspection, can be seen to be a rubber version of a football shirt. But not just any old football shirt, this is sadly not something found in the club shop but a custom made homage to his beloved Leeds United.

JOBSON: “You two look absolutely incredible tonight. You have got the outfits of the 

evening for me. This has got to be a kind of Leeds United suit?”

ANDY LINK: “Absolutely. I had it done especially for the opening night of me club. And all me friends were really dubious because I’m on this thing, they’re really nervous about well, they all knew I was opening the club and I told them I was having a rubber outfit made. Being a Leeds fan, coming from Leeds, it was the only choice I could make. It’s total perversion.” 

JAKE WARREN: I respect it [laughs] but I’m not sure how good I’d look in a rubber version of my football team Crystal Palace’s kit…

But at this time, supporting Leeds United, or any football team for that matter, didn’t just mean a nice day out to the stadium to cheer on your team. 

GILLY: It was so anti-establishment, being a football fan that when I got my, when I first had a job, I didn't tell people what I did at the weekend. I did not say I was a Leeds fan. I'd worked at this advertising agency and were like, what'd you do at the weekend? I wouldn’t say. “I went and smashed up Sheffield or something like that.” Because that’s what everyone - It was a very working class male dominated violent…but you know, it's kind of, well it isn't now, basically. It wasn't something you could boast about in, in, in sort of middle-class circles until football was gentrified in Sky TV came in and sort of made it something that, you know, the masses, uh, the middle-class masses would talk about. Nobody would admit to being a Chelsea fan or admit to being a Leeds fan.

JAKE WARREN: Leeds United was and still is like a religion for so many young Yorkshiremen - they even have a salute - Make a fist with your right arm. Place the thumb edge of the fist on your heart. Extend your arm fully outwards and slightly upwards. They do this when they come across each other. But back then, this passion often spilled over into violence. Really horrible violence actually. And this type of organised violence between football fans was something that in the UK is usually called football hooliganism.

The different groups of hooligans are known as firms, and around this time there was a different firm for pretty much every major football club in existence throughout the UK. The Leeds United firm was called the Leeds Service Crew, named after the public service trains that the firm would travel on to get to away matches. The alternative were the specially organised match trains that were always heavily policed. Hooliganism was part and parcel of football. And that slightly tainted legacy is still felt throughout modern football today . For instance, If you’re after a flat cheap larger in a plastic cup whilst watching a game, you’ll be disappointed - because in England and Wales in 1985, the consumption of alcohol in the stands or even any stadium areas with views of the pitch was banned, specifically to curb hooliganism and violence. In fact, in Scotland you haven’t been able to drink anywhere in football grounds since 1980. 

But the popularity of football hooliganism wasn’t just about the violence. 

GILLY: I was probably more into the clothes and the trainers and the kind of like, you know, the kind of

JAKE WARREN: the beating people up

GILLY: being in the gang. Yeah, it's absolutely, it was kind of like more like I'd been a punk, I'd been into, you know, into, into scar music. I'd been into all sorts of stuff, you know, and that was another sort of place to belong. Probably, I needed a family.

ANDY LINK: It's tribal. It wasn't necessarily inflicting pain and damage on people. It was about territory. It's about standing on their patch and go, “Where are you? We've took you. If you want to check us out, we'll have a go.” But it wasn't so much about hurting people. 

JAKE WARREN: That sense of belonging to something greater than yourself can’t be denied, especially at a time when so many young working class people were feeling disenfranchised and excluded from society and left on the scrap heap. But we can’t sugar coat this. Football hooliganism in the 70s and 80s in the UK was notoriously brutal, prejudiced and violent, and the Leeds Service Crew were famed as one of the hardest of the lot. Gilly told us a story that really highlights the mood at the time. It concerns someone called Peter Sutcliffe, who you may know better as his moniker - the Yorkshire Ripper. He was a serial killer who targeted women in the mid to late 70’s, with many of his victims being sex workers. It took the police 5 years to put Sutcliffe behind bars. 

GILLY: When the Ripper was, um, at large, Leeds fans, they played a tape of the ripper, fake ripper voice. I dunno if you've ever heard it. Somebody sent a tape in saying, “I'm the ripper.” And played it at the stadium. and the leeds Fans hated the police so much, they started chanting, “you'll never catch the Ripper.”

JAKE WARREN: Bloody hell.

GILLY: I know. It's insane. I tell people that story and they just don't believe it. And they were like, they're going like, um, Ripper 12. Coppers nil. It's just unbelievable to sort of think we were in that kind of like, um, that there was, that hatred for the police was so much they didn't want 'em to catch the serial killer. And I can see your, your jaw dropping there because it, it was very them and us. They treated you like animals. Everyone acted like animals. That was what Jack Charlton said once, if you treat people like animals, they act like animals. So it was kind of a, you know. It's unrecognisable. You would not, you couldn't even go back and look at it. Even the footage just doesn't do it justice.

JAKE WARREN: This is a completely shocking story to hear. The anger towards police was so extreme at the time, that football fans were supporting a serial killer - one who was targeting women in a truly horrific way. It really shows the attitude towards police, which at this time was reaching boiling point. And while he claimed it wasn’t so much about inflicting pain, in one of his VHS’s we found a special report on the violence from Leeds United fans abroad, which of course features Andy himself.

ANDY LINK: “They fight differently to us. We’d fight with bottles and boots and fists. They were pulling out machetes and clubs. You know different, different time.  Different time for fighting to what we’re used to. We’ll be prepared for it next time though.”

JAKE WARREN: Andy’s morality is something I’m constantly battling with. The Andy I was meeting in the present day was a carefully curated personality that I liked and warmed too. I respected his grit, his determination, and his sense of respect. But those traits clearly have also been utilised to do some pretty bad things, things I'm not sure I entirely agree with. Andy is also amazing at putting the things he’s done, the perhaps less savoury things, into context. He explained that there was an important side to football hooliganism that exists beyond the violence and the fighting. Even beyond the football.

ANDY LINK: You've got to remember, you cannot put all this into perspective without realising the political climate of the time. These were the dark satanic days of Thatcher. The days of Torism were fucking disgusting. We had nothing. You were treated like shit, no matter what you did. It was hard to climb out of the gutter. They were happy to kick you back in continuously. So, it was our way of fighting against the system. We didn't realise it then, we thought we were just being what we were, we were the hardest firm in England, or so we thought. I'm not saying it's true, but I'm not saying it's not true. You bring it fucking on, if you want West Ham. So, yeah, it was that kind of — and you had a camaraderie and a loyalty that … and then, you'd go out around town. If anybody said it, you'd give them a fucking slap. But that's what it was like. 

JAKE WARREN: Back then Andy was finding it hard to climb out of the gutter. In Wakefield, he was working in a beer can factory. The system was bad. And he became even more deeply disillusioned by it. 

ANDY LINK: My first wage was 19 pound 95p. And the Giro was 17 pound 50. 

JAKE WARREN: When Andy says “Giro”, he’s referring to the unemployment cheques that would be given by the government. And for Andy, he didn’t quite understand why it made sense to work all those hours just for £2.50 more than he would get on benefits. 

ANDY LINK: And it was like, “You've got to have a job. You can't go anywhere. If you don't work hard, you'll never go anywhere.” Well, me father had worked hard all his life and he had never had a pot to piss in. And I always looked at that as if, “I ain't going to grow up like you.” 

JAKE WARREN: So he started looking for other opportunities. And it turned out, it was probably a wise move for him to start looking for those opportunities outside of Yorkshire. As the same personality that had attracted him to football hooliganism was clearly causing him some problems.

ANDY LINK: I left Wakefield because there was a price on my head by coppers and some local thugs and stuff. So it was time to leave. 

JAKE WARREN: Oh dear, what did you do?

ANDY LINK: Ah, I used to fight a lot. I used to go out and I were a bit of a thug. I'm not going to deny it. I wasn't nasty, but I had a short temper. 99% of the time I never slapped somebody unless they fucking deserved it. That's how I always look at it. 

JAKE WARREN: His logic doesn’t really excuse what he was doing, but it’s interesting that it seems Andy too finds himself grappling with his disreputable past. So Andy made his way to London in 1987, pretty much in the dead of night. 

JAKE WARREN: You kind of skipped town almost? 

ANDY LINK: Yeah. Just did a moonlight. Just packed me bag and fucked off. Emptied the flat, just never let him know. Just went, just vanished from Wakefield. 

JAKE WARREN: Wow. So, Hackney, it's where you turned up at. 

ANDY LINK: Yeah. What a place. 

JAKE WARREN: Which is ironically where we are at now. 

ANDY LINK: Yeah. 

JAKE WARREN: But it's changed. 

ANDY LINK: It ain't the same. Where we are now you wouldn’t dare go down at nighttime. When I moved to Hackney, I used to say, it was dogs on a string and mohican haircuts. Because it were punky and scotty. And now, it's labradoodles and wax moustaches. It's gone from that to this. 

JAKE WARREN: Blokes that look like me. 

ANDY LINK: You really have an issue with yourself with me, don’t you? No need for that. Not at all.

JAKE WARREN: In the year Andy found himself in Hackney, the name Banksy hadn’t entered the mainstream yet. Just as Hackney would change between 1987 and now, so would Andy’s life. He had no idea what was coming for him over the next few decades - from throwing an illegal rave that caused the biggest mass arrest in UK history, to over a year spent in prison, to the feud with Banksy himself. 

We need to start thinking about the other side of the coin to the feud, the other major player in our story. The man, the myth, the legend...Banksy himself. This villain's origin story of the signature all started with Banksy - and what he may or may not have said to Andy to set off this almost farfetched chain of wacky events. I mean does he even remember this interaction from decades ago? It could have meant absolutely nothing to him and faded from memory entirely.

It also feels fairly ridiculous just how much of my working day I’m now spending trying to get in touch with probably the most famous anonymous person in the world, I mean not being traceable is kind of his entire shtick…but we couldn’t give up just yet. And the cold email we sent to Pest Control, Banksy’s official office, seemingly got us nowhere. But thankfully, there was someone else I could speak to…

JAKE WARREN: Have you ever met Andy Link?

ROBIN BARTON: Of course I've met Andy Link , who hasn't met Andy Link in the Banksy world and the street art world?

JAKE WARREN: Robin Barton is an art dealer specialising in Banksys. Throughout our chat, I started to get the unnerving sense that he could be closer to Banksy than he was letting on.

ROBIN BARTON: The only way you would ever get a comment out Banksy on something like this, if, if you had something, you held an ace card that he needed to react to, and Andy Link isn't that.

JAKE WARREN: So I basically, I, I don't, I'm lacking an ace up my sleeve.

ROBIN BARTON: Well, you get on a flight over to Hollywood. You can go to his house and you can knock on the door and you might be pleasantly surprised.

JAKE WARREN: Doorstep Banksy in Hollywood.

ROBIN BARTON: Doorstep Banksy in Hollywood. Why not?

JAKE WARREN: Have you got the address? 

ROBIN BARTON: Yeah.

JAKE WARREN: Okay. Maybe that's what I have to do. I'm willing to do that. 

ROBIN BARTON: Well, you know Moby?

JAKE WARREN: Yeah. 

ROBIN BARTON: Yeah. Well Banksy bought Moby’s castle from him.

JAKE WARREN: So you think I, if I actually went up and rang the doorbell and said, “hello, my name's Jake and would like a comment from Banksy.” That's, you might respect the fact that I've come all the way from England to do it?

ROBIN BARTON: Yeah, I think. I think that's your best shot.

JAKE WARREN: So going through PR, going through pest control, going through people that know

ROBIN BARTON: Going through pest control is like into the void.

JAKE WARREN: Now sure, I wouldn’t mind a little all expenses paid trip to Hollywood just to knock on what is allegedly Banksy’s front door, who wouldn't? But…we’ll call that our Plan B. Because right now, we did have an ace up our sleeve…through a little detective work and sweet talking, me and my producer Bea had managed to find another route in. We wanted to update the rest of the team. 

BEA DUNCAN: Yes. So obviously we emailed pest control. 

SANDRA FERRARI: Mm-hmm. How'd that go? 

BEA DUNCAN: Um, no response. Well, we got a bounce back email, um, saying that we would hear something soon if there was a response that needed to happen. 

SANDRA FERRARI: Mm-hmm. 

BEA DUNCAN: Um, chased up on that and there's still been nothing. 

JAKE WARREN: How many people would you reckon email that email address? 

BEA DUNCAN: Well, yeah, I know. 

JAKE WARREN: It's like all the weirdos, isn't it? I mean, maybe we count as the weirdos as well. 

BEA DUNCAN: I think potentially. Yeah, um, but we do have another lead, which is good. 

SANDRA FERRARI: Oh.

JAKE WARREN: Yeah. We managed to get, uh, through underhanded and begging. We have managed to get, uh, email address and phone numbers of his official PR representation, or at least at some point his official PR representation. Don’t know if they still are, but it's definitely a step closer than like, here is a blank email address that anyone can Google on the internet.

SANDRA FERRARI: So, what's the next step?

BEA DUNCAN: So, I have emailed the email contact that we were given. That was a couple of days ago. I still haven't heard anything back, but we were told by our source that 

JAKE WARREN: Super secret source.

BEA DUNCAN: That um, if you contact them, they will put it in front of Banksy. That is what we’ve been told. Whether that's true or not, I guess we'll find out, but we, we were assured that there would be an answer. But I think, potentially, the next step is to give the number a call.

JAKE WARREN: What the fuck do I say? “Hi.”

BEA DUNCAN: Can you imagine if it's just Banksy? 

JAKE WARREN: Yeah. It’s just Banksy. “Hi. Banksy here.”

BEA DUNCAN: And I also feel, I mean, any comment really at this point is good. I just want to know. I wanna know what he’s thinking. Um, but our source also did tell us that when they mentioned this to the PR people, they kind of did a bit of a eye roll and said, “oh, not another feud.” So, this seems like it's a, a staple in Banksy’s life. Um, artists.

JAKE WARREN: But, but the only difference I would say to that is this is the first feud. It’s like a kind of, you know, one of those terrible Marvel films. You know, everyone has an origin story and everyone has a nemesis in those films, you know, when they're nobody, and this kind of feels like it's that. But is that true or not?

BEA DUNCAN: Guess we'll find out. Over to you, Banksy.

JAKE WARREN: Oh Christ.

JAKE WARREN: From Podimo and Message Heard this has been Who Robs A Banksy? It was hosted by me, Jake Warren, and written and produced by Bea Duncan. The music was composed by Tom Biddle, with production support from Harry Stott, and sound engineered by Ivan Eastley. The Story Editor and Executive Producer for Message Heard is Sandra Ferrari. The Executive Producers for Podimo are Jake Chudnow and Matt White. 

1. A Statue in Central London

EPISODE 1 - A Statue in Central London

ROBIN BARTON: I understand that there's a desire to sort of try and get some comment from Banksy, but it's not gonna happen. 

JAKE WARREN: Not even a sort of three sentences on an email…

ROBIN BARTON: No, because what? What's in it for Banksy?

JAKE WARREN: If you’re wondering how I ended up in this situation, quizzing someone about how I could speak to one of the most famous anonymous people in the world, don’t worry. I’m still pretty confused about it myself. It’s not exactly what you expect to be doing when you show up to work in the morning. 

For you to understand how I got here, I need to tell you a story. If you’ve ever been to Soho, the heart of the West End, you know, the bit of London where nobody actually lives, you’ve probably at some point found yourself on Shaftesbury Avenue. It’s a bustling main road absolutely rammed with tourists. The hanging red lanterns of Chinatown on one side. Theatres with flashing signs for the world’s most famous musicals on the other, heaving pubs with drunken day trippers spilling out in every direction, and city workers sinking pints.

If you’ve always lived in London like me, your tolerance for hordes of tourists and city boys is pretty low and you’ll want to get out of there sharpish. So you might then turn down a side street and stumble upon a small quiet square. A square where, if you visited on a particular morning in 2004, you would have seen a group of men in white boiler suits and gas masks loading a statue onto a truck.

From afar, the three and a half tonne, ten foot bronze sculpture looks pretty much exactly like Rodin’s famous statue, “The Thinker”. Even if you’re not a statue expert, I guarantee you’ll know this one - a nude male figure leaning forward, hand on chin, lost in thought. But this statue being loaded onto the truck is named The Drinker - and it has a traffic cone on its head. And spray painted on the side of its plinth - possibly THE most exciting name in all of street art - BANKSY. Despite their slightly odd attire, passers by didn’t seem to give the men much notice. If you’d have been there on that fateful morning, you might well have thought that they were from the local council, removing a statue left there without permission. Or perhaps they were a hired crew from the infamous artist himself, sent to collect it or move it on to the next location.  

On both counts, you’d have been wrong. Because what you actually would have been witnessing was an art heist in broad daylight, in the centre of one of the world’s busiest cities. The statue was being kidnapped. Sounds ridiculous, I know. But that act would lead to an almost 20-year war of bad blood, retaliation, and legal battles that are still being waged today. 

The real question is, what kind of criminal mastermind would undertake such a daring heist? Who would dream of going toe to toe with arguably the world's most famous, and most beloved graffiti artist?

ANDY LINK: Oh, that's such a fucking wanky middleclass question, that [lots of laughter]

JAKE WARREN: That mastermind goes by the name of Andy Link. 

ANDY LINK: "We will strike at the heart of your imperial art establishment at the banksy machine. BE warned, and get ready."

JAKE WARREN: The fact that someone would kidnap a Banksy statue is pretty absurd already, but the story of why it happened, and the following two-decade long debacle, is frankly even wilder. This journey will take us through some of the UK’s most subversive sub-cultures - from 80’s football hooliganism, through the illegal acid house rave scene, to the underworld of fetish sex parties. Bit of a roller coaster, right? 

It will lead me to wade through the realities of the art establishment, who gets to be taken seriously as an artist, and what drives that primal desire within us all, to get our own back on the people who have wronged us. And throughout it all, I’ll be trying to actually speak to the most elusive and famed anonymous artist in the world. 

I’m Jake Warren and from Podimo and Message Heard, this is Who Robs A Banksy?

It’s not often you hear something that completely blows your mind. I mean I've done some pretty strange things - spent time in North Korea, hunted Werewolves in Hull and even ingratiated myself with an alien sex cult,  all in the name of high brow journalism of course... 

But last year,  exactly just that happened. I was at a party pretending to enjoy myself and plotting my French exit, but as I was finishing another hipster beer with a name like a Children's bedtime story, I overheard one of those sentences. 

PARTYGOER: My neighbour actually used to have an original Banksy in his back garden.

JAKE WARREN: Did I really just hear what I think I heard? Was this the familiar nonsense spouted in kitchens at house parties the world over, or was this actually true? But when I asked, she promised it was true, and even had proof. 

A while back, she used to live in what was once a big house now converted into flats in Hackney, East London. And when she looked directly out her window, she would be faced with a 10-foot bronze statue in the garden of the ground floor flat. It was the kidnapped statue, Banksy’s “The Drinker,”  just sitting out there for all to see.

I immediately started digging. And it didn’t take me long to find the culprit. Mostly because he absolutely loves talking about it. So who the hell is this guy?

Andy Link, or “Linky” to his mates, has got a knack for popping up in almost every subculture and anti-establishment movement the UK has ever produced in the past four decades - he’s a bit like the Forrest Gump of UK culture. But life for Andy is a little less box of chocolates and more like a couple of pints of ale.

He’s been a football hooligan…

PRESENTER:  “Andy Link is a former member of the notorious Leeds service crew.”

JAKE WARREN: …Porn star…

HOST: “What’s your stage name, Andy?” 

ANDY LINK: “Bobby Tupper.”

JAKE WARREN: …he’s organised fetish parties…

ANDY LINK: “As punk rock was for the 70s, you had goth music in the 80s, you had acid house for the 90s,  fetish is the millennium.”

JAKE WARREN: …put on illegal raves…

ANDY LINK: I organised the biggest acid house party in the north of England at the time.

JAKE WARREN: And, currently, he’s known as the artist AK47.

ANDY LINK: “I am AK47, leader and frontman of the artopolitical humourist art terror group Art Kieda.”

JAKE WARREN: He’s the kind of bloke who has that gift for sniffing out the next opportunity, and using it to his advantage. 

ROBIN BARTON: Who hasn’t met Andy Link in Banksy World?

ROSALIA FERRARA: His timing is impeccable. And if it's worked fair enough, he'll milk it until the end.

WAYNE ANTHONY: He’s a very hard person to say not to. He’s got an overpowering kind of nature.

GILLY: He's a big character. He's a big personality. He's worn many different caps. 

ROBIN BARTON:  Andy is the Andy Link show. I mean, he just is relentlessly and remorselessly Andy Link.

JAKE WARREN: Andy forced his way into the centre of so many pivotal cultural moments in modern British history…with varying degrees of success. And we’ll hear some of his wild stories throughout this series - some veering into the, frankly, unbelievable. But the kidnapping of “The Drinker” is the one that interests me most. Because the actual kidnapping is just the beginning. 

As a journalist, I’ve spent plenty of time exploring the extremities of human interest. Iiiiiis what I say when I’m trying to impress someone - really, it means spending time with nutters, extremists and weirdos of almost every persuasion. So I got in touch with Andy, and he invited me and my colleague Jenny round to his. It’s hard to put Andy into words really - his energy slaps you in the face the moment you meet him. He gave us an MTV cribs tour of his flat, full to the brim with art, while he chain-smoked cigarettes, dropping ash wherever he liked. He even showed us the garden where the Drinker had lived.

ANDY LINK: So, yeah. That’s where it was. This is a room with - it’s got a 

room of its own style.

JAKE WARREN: I wish my bedroom looked like this.

ANDY LINK: Mirrors on the ceiling, pink champagne on ice. These are some of my Banksys. I’ve just had three pieces go out to the ‘Art of Banksy’ show.

JAKE WARREN: As Andy showed me his intriguingly decorated flat, he talked at a mile a minute - about Banksy, about the heist, and told me hundreds of different totally unrelated stories that seemed, at first glance, like they had to be total and utter bollocks. 

ANDY LINK: [Overlapping vocals] I was involved in CB radio when that first started…I ran a little stall there…I worked at doing all the big gigs…looked after David Gilmore’s mother…I was on the second row of Jackson’s security at Wembley for 16 nights at Wembley.

JAKE WARREN: It’s clear Andy has led…a life, a pretty wild life. But how do you get from being security for a gig company to nicking a statue off Banksy? I needed some more time to get to the bottom of this - and I think it would be best to do it on my own turf. 

ANDY LINK: And yeah. We’ll see how it goes.

JAKE WARREN: Yeah. Just keep chatting really.

ANDY LINK: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Set a WhatsApp group up and you can ask me what you want and I’ll try and answer it honestly. You know your best way to get back?

JAKE WARREN: So, after a bit of back and forth, I got him into our studio, in front of a mic. 

JAKE WARREN: But just a couple of questions whilst you're here. You don't have to think about it too much, but just things that I'm interested to hear how you describe. So, the first one is, if you were to describe yourself in a sentence or two, how would you describe yourself?

ANDY LINK: Gregarious, loud, self-opinionated, honest, and a man of his word.

JAKE WARREN: And a northern lad.

ANDY LINK: That goes without saying. 

JAKE WARREN: They say you only get one chance to make a first impression. But when it comes to Andy, and as I would learn, he loves nothing more than breaking the rules. He doesn't care what you think about him...he is unapologetically just himself. Or perhaps just very good at making you think that. When talking to him, he’s inviting, but also quite cutting.

In 2015, 11 years after the heist of the Banksy, Andy was interviewed by Matilda Battersby. At the time, she was the arts editor of The Independent. She’s moved on now, and the interview was almost 8 years ago. So when we emailed her, we thought she might not even remember what we were talking about. But she came back saying she remembers the encounter with Andy vividly.  Which I think says a lot. I mean, how many conversations can you remember 8 years on? Especially as a journalist, when you’re talking to new people pretty much every day. 

MATILDA BATTERSBY: Normally when a national newspaper's doing an interview, the interviewee is often incredibly charming…but with Andy, that didn't really happen. Um, he came to my office and instantly demanded a very large cup of coffee from the Costa that was there. Um, I, I was obviously happy to buy him a cup of coffee, but then he thrust a sandwich into my hands as well and said, I'll have that as well. So that was my instant - he hadn't immediately sort of given me a sense that he was very happy to be there. There he was quite grumpy.

JAKE WARREN: Andy is the opposite of a people pleaser. Particularly when it comes to the media. It was quite refreshing, to be honest, to meet a person who wasn’t going to try to impress you just because you were covering them and their story. 

JAKE WARREN: Obviously, the point of this first recording 

ANDY LINK: Is just to get the ground working. 

JAKE WARREN: Yeah. Just a bit of a like bookends, right? General, kind of, we don't want to go into too much detail. 

ANDY LINK: Well, if I start with too much, you can just go wind it up. That's easy enough. 

JAKE WARREN: And also, it's me that's talking to you, right? And so, you have to feel a level of comfort about talking to your life with me. And obviously, we've met each other a few times. But I'm also aware that, I'm a middle-class soft southerner in your eyes. 

ANDY LINK: Mate, I've been knocking out with middle-class soft southerners for the last 30 fucking years. So, that don't bother me at all. 

JAKE WARREN: How do I stack up against the other ones? 

ANDY LINK: You're in a pile. 

JAKE WARREN: Okay. I’m in the pile. 

ANDY LINK: You're in the pile. 

JAKE WARREN: Well, my aim’s to rise to the top of that pile. 

ANDY LINK: Yeah, yeah. Well, it won’t be hard.

JAKE WARREN: Andy really did have a way of making me feel comfortable. When I first met him, I genuinely really warmed to him.

ROSALIA FERRARA: He's a loon with a big heart. There is always a story and you know, you just, um, taken in by the story and you're like locked in until the end. You know? He's just a one in a million type person.

JAKE WARREN: That’s Rosalia Ferrara. She’s worked in the music and arts industry for years, and along the way, ended up doing PR for Andy and his art. Although, she wanted to make it clear it was PR in quite a loose sense of the word. In Andy’s world you don’t do things by the book.

ROSALIA FERRARA: Uh, I was very underground. Even though I worked with high profile names, I wasn't working with blue chip companies, if you like. I'm not that kind of person. I'm more street, I would say. More underground. I've known Andy, I'd say over 20 years now. Maybe even longer. We met in Leeds. Can’t exactly remember when or where. Like-minded people like us, we kind of, if we didn't meet at the beginning, we eventually met after parties, clubs - that kind of thing - exhibitions, anything arty. The same people would be there. The people that needed to be known, I guess. But yeah, he was always doing something, always creating and hosting and promoting and making sure that he was, that everybody knew about what he was doing. One way or another.

JAKE WARREN: This was something we heard again and again. Andy always just seems to be there. People know him, even if they’ve never met him. He really lodges in your mind like... chewing gum on your shoe.

Rosalia and Andy met in Leeds, after Andy had left his hometown of nearby Wakefield, in the dead of night without telling anyone. But…that’s a story for another episode…

Because there’s another character in this story we should probably get to know. Andy’s nemesis is pretty much the antithesis of him. One gregarious, possibly opportunistic, and who’ll tell you everything you want to know. The other, operating under the cloak of darkness, giving a handful of interviews in his career and somehow, STILL remaining anonymous. People go wild for Banksy. And for the theories of who he might be. The obsession is so much that in 2022 a local councillor from South West Wales literally had to resign over the constant speculation that he was, in fact, Banksy. He just couldn’t do his job anymore. In my time with Andy, I’ve heard his side of the story, totally unrestrained - including plenty of accusations about the man behind the mythical Banksy. So, my producer Bea called a meeting with myself and the rest of the production team - Sandra and Jenny.

BEA DUNCAN: So I figured we could just have a little chat. Obviously, a lot of this show is surrounding the kidnapping of a Banksy, and how do people feel about trying to find him, trying to get in contact with Banksy himself. 

JAKE WARREN: I feel like in any other context, that sounds like a really normal thing to do and then you obviously say it's Banksy and we sound like we are either insane or idiots.Um, no. Look, I mean, don't, if you don't try, you don't know. Don't ask, don't get. “Dear Mr. Banksy, please be interviewed.”

SANDRA FERRARI: So what are our options? How can we do this?

BEA DUNCAN:  So when you Google “how to contact Banksy” and you've got pestcontroloffice.com. I’m pretty sure Pest Control is the office that handles Banksy’s affairs?

SANDRA FERRARI:  How do we know that?

BEA DUNCAN: That is what the website says. 

SANDRA FERRARI: Oh.

BEA DUNCAN: “We’re the office that handles the paper work for the graffiti artist Banksy. We keep detailed records of all the artwork, answer inquiries, and intercept hate mail. We are the sole point of contact for the artist. There is an email address here for Pest Control. 

JAKE WARREN: We should definitely email it. What do we loose? I guess we need to be instructional right? In terms of what we want from him. And we know, you know, don't, let's not make it war and peace. It's like, “hello Banksy. We want to talk to you about the bloke that stole your art and held it to ransom.” Andy, for however many years, has basically just had carte blanche, unfiltered, one-sided, “this is the truth, this is what's happened, banksys awful, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And Banksy, for whatever reason, has never responded and never counted that viewpoint. So this is an opportunity for Banksy - Jesus Christ, that sounds so insane just saying that out loud - butut this is an opportunity for Banksy to like set the record straight and be like, “no, this guy's a grifter. This guy's a thief. This guy is using me for clout. Actually, everyone should ignore this bloke. He's a charlatan,” which he’s never done publicly.

BEA DUNCAN: I wanna do a quick sweepstake at this point to see who thinks we're gonna get a response. Any response from 

JAKE WARREN: Banksy.

BEA DUNCAN:  from pest control office.com. 

SANDRA FERRARI: I think if we craft this email, well, we will get a response. Also, we can chase it down. I feel like we’re going to get a response. 

JAKE WARREN: I would love to say we are gonna get it. I don't feel that confident, but I think we should try every which way avenue that we can. And even if it's, you know, if this first email doesn't lead to anything, that doesn't mean we give up. 

BEA DUNCAN: Ok. I think we know what we've gotta do now. 

SANDRA FERRARI: All right. 

BEA DUNCAN: We've gotta find Banksy. 

JAKE WARREN: There’s one person who might not be pleased with the idea of us trying to coax out his nemesis and hear his side of the story…

JAKE WARREN: I mean, before we kind of start, actually, there was one question that I wanted to ask you, just almost out of my own curiosity, because you've lived down in what, London for 30 years? 

ANDY LINK: 35 years, man. And boy, caught me, I am.

JAKE: But that was going to be my question, is that, I know lots of people from top north, that have moved to London. 

ANDY LINK: You're not going to climb to the top of the pile with that shitty Yorkshire accent. 

JAKE WARREN: I’ve never told you. My nana was from Yorkshire. 

ANDY LINK: Yeah, that's your saving grace. 

JAKE WARREN: Yes. 

ANDY LINK: Bless your nan. 

JAKE WARREN: She didn't much care for my Southern ways. 

ANDY LINK:  Anyway, It's not about you. 

JAKE WARREN: No. But my question was going to be is, you've lived here 30/35 years and you haven't lost your accent at all. Is that conscious? Have you decided, “No, actually, I'm a proud Yorkshireman. I’m never going to lose my accent.” 

ANDY LINK: No, it's not conscious. It's not a deliberate thing. I've not sort of picked it a bit apart like this you know, and thought, “Oh, I better not fuck it up, while I can.” No, it's just, to be honest, I'm not one to change things. Well, that great Yorkshire saying, “If it's not broke, then don't fix it.” And I've never needed to. And to be honest, I am proud of me Yorkshire accent. I'm very proud of me Yorkshire roots, but everybody knows that the Yorkshire accent is the most friendly, the most honest. You know, they don’t see any edge with you. So I don’t know what it is, but Yorkshire accent is very warming. And so, why would I want to change it?

JAKE WARREN: It’s definitely a warm, cuddly, loving accent, which is the exact vibe that you give off Andy. 

ANDY LINK: Thank you. Yeah. But there's a lot underneath that warm cuddliness that you don't want to hear. Underneath that.

JAKE WARREN: I believe that as well. 

ANDY LINK: Underneath that, there's an animal asleep, you don't want to wake him. 

JAKE WARREN: I believed him. While I had naturally warmed to Andy, I did know I needed to be a bit careful. Many of the people we reached out to for interviews turned us down flat, or Andy told us we probably shouldn’t contact as they’d fallen out over something or other over the years. He was either just a marmite person or there was something more nefarious at play. As we’ll find out, he can really hold a grudge, even just for a perceived slight. And he’ll carry that grudge with him ‘til he gets his own back. But mostly, I just enjoyed listening to the ludicrous things he told me about his past. 

ANDY LINK:  I’d been to Ibiza in ‘80s — I think ‘87 I went to Ibiza. I'd done a bit of following bands through Europe. I'd done a couple tours. I went to the Berlin Wall last day with a band called the Ghost Dance and the Ramones as well. I did a full tour with Ramones. Me and C.J. are good mates. That's another story. 

JAKE WARREN: That is another story. 

ANDY LINK: That is another story. 

JAKE WARREN: I’m writing that one down.

JAKE WARREN: When it came to Andy, I was never quite sure how much to believe. But the 26 page wrap sheet I got from prison services definitely added some colour and context. And the testimony of his long term friend told me there was more truth than fiction here.  

ROSALIA FERRARA: Back then there was a lot of invites to loads of parties and you was able to get like 20 on the guest list back then, you’re lucky if you get a one now. But Andy was always invited and, and that was like going to Monaco for Bez’s gumball rally. Um, having a party on the boat, you know, with the Cuban brothers, some ex-criminal picking us up on the speed boat. I mean, gosh, I mean, it is a bit vague, but there's a lot of crazy, fun parties with lots of stories. 

JAKE WARREN: And one thing about Andy is he was always able to whip out the receipts. Not long after we’d first met, he showed up to our offices with a plastic bag full of unmarked VHS tapes and a ring binder. The binder was full to the brim with newspaper clippings, flyers and photographs that he’d taken over the years. Flicking through was like taking a trip through Andy’s mind, and we could see the proof for loads of the frankly unbelievable stories he’d already told me. After warning us that some of the tapes might contain pornography that he’d starred in, I left our producers with the unenviable task of sifting through the archives of Andy. 

It was fascinating. We really got to see Andy from every angle possible. It’s clear that he really cares about publicity. Every newspaper he’s ever been mentioned in has been clipped or printed. 

Every appearance on a television show and there’s been a lot - had been recorded.

He’d appeared on classics including Thursday Night Live, the Legendary mid-noughties tabloid chat show Trisha, even a BBC news package, - sometimes as a guest, other times just in the audience. He’s always just sort of there. And you can imagine, he’s always got something to say. Like this chat show, where he interrupts someone to give his opinion on sex addictions.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: “You’re stretching the use of the term.”

ANDY: “What about people that work out? Who are addicted to working out in the gym and get a rush from that.”

AUDIENCE MEMBER: “If you put your body through enough pain, you can generate endorphins.”

ANDY: “Yeah, but what about putting your body through pleasure? Does that not give you the same sort of thing?”

AUDIENCE MEMBER: “No, if you do something pleasurable, you want to repeat it. That’s perfectly natural. That’s what pleasure servers are for.”

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: “Andy are you trying to excuse your behaviour?” 

ANDY LINK: “No, I’ve got no excuse for my behaviour at all.”

JAKE WARREN: But one of the most illuminating tapes was a copy of a documentary called “Swingers” from 1999, following couples who were in an open relationship, including Andy and his then wife, Fiona.

He’d never mentioned Fiona to us before - we hadn’t delved into his romantic life much at all really -  so it was a bit of a surprise. It was the only tape in the collection that wasn’t a panel or discussion show, and the cameras had clearly followed the couple around for a long time. It did feel like we were seeing Andy in a more unfiltered, unguarded way than before. Fiona actually appeared on Channel’s 4’s old TV show “The Right To Reply,” saying that the director had painted them both in a bad light. 

FIONA: “I was portrayed as a weak and highly distressed woman, and Andy, a male chauvinist pig.”

JAKE WARREN: On “Right to Reply” viewers are allowed to voice their complaints about TV shows they have an issue with, so Fiona appeared with the director, and claimed their relationship was shown to be much more toxic than it really was. 

DIRECTOR: “Well, we filmed with you I think for 4 days but we spent a lot of time with you. We’d probably have known you for six months. The first time we met you, you had a fight. You told us that there were stains on your wall from the fights you had. Everytime we filmed with you, you had a fight.”

FIONA: “Yeah, but fighting isn’t the only part of our relationship.”

DIRECTOR: “I included Andy talking about why he married you and how much he loved you. And I think -”

FIONA: “There was a particularly tender moment that you didn’t include, which is where Andy broke down saying how much he loves me. And he broke down and it showed, it showed him in a different light. It showed him in a more human aspect.”

DIRECTOR: “Fiona, you weren’t there when that happened. You weren’t there at the interview. And it wasn’t used in the end because he didn’t seem that sincere and I’m sorry if that’s hard for you to hear.”

JAKE WARREN: Something was to me as I watched these clips - I was getting the feeling that he is often very aware of how he’s coming across, despite my initial impression of him, and has a tendency to hide the less savoury parts. I suppose you can’t hold that against him too much - who doesn’t want to be seen in a positive light? But for a person who came across as ‘what you see as what you get,’ I guess I was a bit surprised at how much he wanted to be involved in the narrative being spun about him. 

Andy is a man of many contradictions. He’s loud, brash and not afraid to speak his mind. He knows what he likes and likes what he knows. But he’s also quite a private person, and constantly aware of the ways he’s being portrayed and perceived.

JAKE WARREN: Who do you think in the world knows you the most? 

ANDY LINK: Fucking hell…..urggh…

JAKE WARREN: Speaking to some of Andy’s oldest friends, and trawling through the depths of his archives, we’re starting to piece him together. Because if we’re ever going to understand the kind of person who kidnaps a statue in the middle of the day, made by one of the most famous street artists in the world, we’re really going to have to get to the bottom of who the real Andy Link is. Hard nut hooligan or a loyal friend? Thoughtful artist with a subversive agenda or just a chancer, a charlatan even? Maybe he’s the lot rolled into one?

And that’s going to require a bit of trust from him to really show me inside his life, and perhaps let that mask slip just ever so slightly. 

In this series, we’ll get into the actual kidnapping, and the aftershocks that happened throughout the many years that followed.  There’ll be stories of wild theories and accusations of selling out, illegal raves and football hooliganism - and we’ll be diving into the surprisingly dark underbelly of the art establishment that Andy so desperately wants to push up against. And, of course, we’ll be chasing our one elusive character throughout - trying to find out what Banksy thinks about all this. 

But the real question, and the one that I asked when I first heard this story, is a simple one. Why? What could possibly have sparked a nearly two-decade battle between these two men? You’d think that the thing that would cause someone to do something like this would be pretty big: Money, a big disagreement, perhaps a political statement. Well, the real catalyst it turned out, was much simpler. Because it all started over…a signature. I think I should take you back to the start. To 2003…

JAKE WARREN: But that’s also, I guess, the beginning of the feud. 

ANDY LINK: Well, yeah. 

JAKE WARREN: When Banksy became your nemesis, right, or you became Banksy’s nemesis. 

ANDY LINK: I'm more Banksy’s nemesis than he's mine, I’d like to think. 

JAKE WARREN: That’s coming up in this series of Who Robs A Banksy.

From Podimo and Message Heard this has been Who Robs A Banksy? It was hosted by me, Jake Warren, and written and produced by Bea Duncan. The music was composed by Tom Biddle, with production support from Harry Stott, and sound engineered by Ivan Eastley. The Story Editor and Executive Producer for Message Heard is Sandra Ferrari. The Executive Producers for Podimo are Jake Chudnow and Matt White. 

Trailer Transcript - Who Robs a Banksy

Who'd Rob A Banksy? | Trailer transcript

ROBIN BARTON: Listen. I understand that there's a desire to sort of try and get some comment from Banksy, but it's not gonna happen. I mean, Banksy is a notoriously selfish individual.

JAKE WARREN: If you’re wondering how I ended up in this situation, quizzing someone about how I could speak to one of the most famous anonymous people in the world, don’t worry. For you to understand how I got here, I need to tell you a story. 

One morning in 2004, in a small square off Shaftesbury Avenue in London, a group of men in white boiler suits and gas masks could be found loading a statue onto a flatbed truck. The statue was nothing that remarkable at first glance -  a replica of Rodin’s famous statue The Thinker but with a traffic cone on its head. But if you had looked closer, you’d have found spray painted on the side of its plinth…possibly the most exciting name in all of street art…BANKSY.

You might well have thought these men were from the local council, removing something that had been placed in central London without permission. Or, possibly, they were from Banksy’s crew, moving the statue on to its next location. Well…on both counts, you’d have been wrong. 

Because what you actually would have been witnessing was an art heist in broad daylight, in the centre of one of the world’s busiest cities. The statue was being kidnapped, and held to ransom. An act that would lead to an almost 20 year war of bad blood, retaliation and legal battles that are still being waged today. 

GILLY: I mean it’s still going on isn't it. It’s like the longest heist in history…

ROSALIA FERRARA: But with the Banksy thing, yeah, it was a whole kettle of new kettle of fish. He decided to take the biggest thing

MATILDA BATTERSBY: I think there was a lot of, a lot of animosity towards Banksy for sort of hogging the limelight. 

JAKE WARREN: The fact that someone would kidnap a Banksy statue is pretty absurd already, but the story of why it happened, how the statue vanished again after it was kidnapped, and why it was mysteriously put up for auction over 10 years later is even wilder. Really, you’ll want to sit down for this one. It all comes down to 1 man, and a 2 decade long vendetta. 

ANDY LINK: I'm more Banksy’s nemesis than he's mine, I like to think. 

JAKE WARREN: The story will take us on a journey through UK’s most subversive sub-cultures: from art heists and art terrorists, to 80s football hooliganism, the 90s illegal rave scene, even fetish parties. It’ll lead me to wade through the realities of the art establishment, who gets to be taken seriously as an artist, and what drives that primal desire within us all, to get our own back on the people who have wronged us. And throughout it all, I’ll be trying to speak to the most elusive and famed anonymous artist in the world. 

JAKE WARREN: There are a lot of people who say you’re Banksy…are you?

• ANDY LINK: We will strike at the heart of your imperial art establishment at The Banksy Machine. Be warned, and get ready.

JAKE WARREN: From Podimo and Message Heard, this is Who Robs A Banksy? The first two episodes will be available on Friday 28th of April - just search Who Robs A Banksy on your favourite podcast platform, and subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.