6. Finale

EPISODE 6 

[Phone Ringing]

BANKSY’S PR: Hello?

JAKE WARREN: Hi, is that [censored]?

BANKSY’S PR: Speaking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JAKE WARREN: Okay.

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

JAKE WARREN: I don't.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ROBIN BARTON: Yeah.

[Music Playing]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ROBIN BARTON: Wouldn't that be the-

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

ROBIN BARTON: The scoop.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Music Playing]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the story in itself I think is warranted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JAKE WARREN: Yeah, still today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JAKE WARREN: Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Music Playing]

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

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

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