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.