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.