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.