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.