Original subtitles

It was Frieze Week in London, which is, I suppose, the week in

the London calendar when everyone in the art world is in town.

And the contemporary evening auctions are the biggest in London,

and this was Sotheby's.

It was a huge sale. 60-odd lots.

And this Banksy was positioned right at the end,

the last lot of the evening.

I was bidding for the Banksy, the "Girl with Balloon",

and it was the one that, you know, everyone connects Banksy to.

The year before, so I think in 2017,

it was rated as the UK's most favourite art piece.

For me, from a collector's point of view and a dealer's point of view,

uh, it's the holy grail.

Banksy, "Girl with Balloon", ladies and gentlemen.

I'm going to start bidding at 100, 150, 200 thousand.

300 thousand. 350. 400 thousand.

450 thousand. 500 thousand.

The estimate being quite low, that encouraged the bidding.

And there was a lot of energy. It was a big sale.

Does anybody...? 700 thousand.

We went up to £650,000. Stopped there.

Towards the end, I think there was maybe about two or three bidders left.

800 thousand. Thank you.

No pressure. Last chance.

At £850,000.

860!

Last... Yeah, are we bidding?

And selling for 860 thousand!

-Thank you very much.

When the hammer comes down that's always very loud

because it clearly demarcates the fact that a work is sold.

Thank you very much indeed. And, ladies and gentlemen...

It all happened in sort of like a split second.

The gavel came down, the alarm started beeping.

Everyone's attention and everyone turning round and all the mobile phones going up.

What's happening? Is that like a fire alarm? Did someone steal a painting?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have to move on here. Sorry, can I have your attention?

It stopped halfway

and two technicians were sort of ushered out to take it away,

and usually they'd have white gloves on and they didn't,

so there was kind of an indication that this wasn't expected.

Was this a prank by Banksy? Is this a real Banksy?

Was this pure genius or...?

It wasn't that the painting fell out because the frame was broken.

It was choreographed.

Knowing that Banksy's a great provocateur,

immediately the question was, "Was Banksy in the saleroom himself?"

And it seems that he was.

But, again, unproven, so this is what keeps you guessing.

Who is he? Where is he? Is he here? Is he, you know...

- He wasn't in the room, but I... -How do you know?

I... Well, I don't know.

But I saw the person who activated the alarm.

He had a briefcase with some mechanical machines in there.

There was a man with some sort of, not disguise,

but, you know, dark glasses and a hat, or a sort of...

He was wearing sunglasses, yes, and he was wearing a hat, I think. Um...

So it's like a comedy!

It's like a pastiche, it's like a caricature.

Was this a prank? Was this a stunt?

Or is this art?

It was a major art statement.

Is it the price that makes art worthwhile?

Or is it because you look at it and think, "This is brilliant?"

And the art world is very snobby. To most people it's impenetrable

and Banksy punches through that wall.

It's like a massive "fuck you" to the art world.

It is.

Oh, no, sorry. I am allowed to say "fuck"?

His work supported the underdog

who was fighting against neo-liberalism and capitalism.

He created a new way of selling, marketing, talking.

He alerted a generation to the ills of society.

Right now, Banksy is one of the ten most highly rated artists

in the contemporary art market.

And selling for £8,500,000.

-Congratulations.

Nobody has been that famous and yet invisible.

The NYPD would like to arrest him.

But just take a look at how ordinary New Yorkers are responding.

Everyone's trying to own a bit of Banksy.

Hey! Hey!

Fuck off!

It's a sad day, people. The Banksy has been removed from the wall of the Taibach.

-We want Banksy! -What do we want?

-Banksy back! -When do we want it?

Now!

It's just a massive old circus.

99.9% of the world's population have no idea who Banksy is at all,

what he looks he.

People think the anonymity was like a smart marketing trick by Banksy,

a move of pure genius.

And it was but it wasn't done deliberately.

It was more self-preservation than self-promotion.

How urgently he was wanted by the police, I don't know,

but he was certainly painting on walls and that's a crime.

Originally, anonymity was completely essential for him.

We all have an identity,

we're all given a name when we're born.

That's the way society has been built.

So, refusing to reveal one's identity is in fact

refusing to play by society's rules.

Banksy showed that if you do want to be anonymous, you can.

He is probably, in the Kardashian age,

the only person that doesn't want to be famous.

Banksy's is almost a kind of unofficial spokesperson for people.

I mean, we all would like our politicians to speak our language,

but they don't, on the whole.

Deep down people feel like he's an everyday person

and people can relate to that.

He's one of us, you know.

Keep the mask as it is then that's fine. We can project.

Today, Banksy

has twice as many followers on Instagram as the Louvre.

Banksy doesn't speak to the 1%, like most contemporary artists,

he speaks to 100% of the population.

From the very start, Banksy has a signature style.

There's a very ironic quality to his work

which makes it immediately recognisable.

It's a sort of sarcasm, a British sense of humour.

It's an easy, simplistic message that you can get

when you're going past on a bus, going past on a train or waking down the street.

They're bold enough to be see from the moon.

Between the humour, politics and the simplicity of the message,

he managed to capture everybody,

from small children to grandparents.

It's like, it sucked in everybody.

"The Flower Thrower",

which he initially created in Jerusalem in 2003,

is an image everyone has appropriated

as a way of protesting against the violence of war.

Even if you're not aware of its original context,

the image still works, because it reflects

adolescent, student rebellion, and the anger young people feel.

Banksy's the voice shouting out,

screaming against what was happening in society.

There were more and more arrests, stop and search.

There were more and more security cameras. You were being monitored.

You were being monitored through your phone,

you were being monitored on the street.

It was him, a single voice, bringing all these other voices together.

So, welcome along, everyone,

to the Bristol Street Art and Graffiti Art Guided Walking Tour,

where this morning you will be discovering why Bristol

is the street art and graffiti capital of the UK.

Possibly of Europe, too.

Plus there's insights into the life and work of Banksy.

Not "Bansky", it's Banksy,

which is based upon his original artist name, which was Robin Banks,

which is far too long, so he shortened his name down to Banksy

and the artist we've all heard of was born from that very moment.

We don't know if Banksy was really born in Bristol

but we know he's from Bristol in the sense that

that's where his first tags began to appear in the '90s.

He chose the city as the playground for his work.

Graffiti represents the vandalistic essence of things,

meaning an intervention without authorisation,

where you leave behind what's known as your tag.

So he starts off with this vandalistic energy.

Graffiti isn't a way of communicating for the people.

Graffiti is a way of talking to your peers.

There comes a point when he starts using the stencil technique,

which is a lot more mainstream, a lot more popular,

in order to communicate things to as many people as possible.

Banksy moves to the capital, to London,

where a greater number of people see his work.

The media is also much more powerful there.

And so when he gets to London,

there's actually a much bigger impact on the whole country.

This young guy from Bristol spread his message throughout London

and it was those very early stencils in London

that just hadn't been seen before.

So it was like a new voice in a bigger city.

It started really in 2002.

I was sat in my photography gallery and an art dealer who I knew came in

and he had roll, the size of this,

of Banksy prints and they were all "Rude Coppers".

He peeled one off, put it down on my desk,

and said, "Do you want to buy these?"

It was a picture of a copper holding his finger up like this,

called "Ruder Copper", and I didn't get it.

Within two weeks, I realised my mistake.

And that, suddenly, these works were taking off.

Kids were going in to these pop-up shows that Banksy was doing,

buying these prints, going straight back to their digs,

getting on their computer, getting on to eBay and flipping them for profit,

and created this crazy market that took off at such an exponential speed

it was quite shocking to watch.

He's irreverent,

and that speaks to younger people,

because he's one of them, he's a part of that group.

And I kick myself to this day that I wasn't in early enough

to understand it, because I'd be a lot wealthier now!

The trajectory of his career is aligned to that of the internet.

Because, for the first time ever, suddenly there was a tool.

That these artists couldn't get representation by the galleries,

they were being accepted by the museums.

Suddenly, their careers flew cos they could get their work out.

What museum or gallery in the world

can bring you that kind of audience?

Painting walls isn't enough for Banksy any more.

A graffitied elephant the star of this American show.

Very quickly, he decides that walls aren't enough for him

and that he needs to break through the art market.

A step away from street art,

this is Banksy's graffiti rendered into 3D.

Banksy says this is a different kind of family day out.

Welcome to Dismaland.

End-joy.

He invents a horror version of Disneyland.

It's the absolute opposite of actual Disneyland.

In his Disneyland there are only really dark images of people dying,

of migrants drowning.

In another section, it's the media being hauled over hot coals.

And in another section it's all about broken dreams.

Banksy's saying, "Don't you get it?

This is what's behind Mickey Mouse, behind Sleeping Beauty's castle.

This is reality."

What makes him stand out are his scathing remarks.

He's someone who hits where it hurts,

who lights fires,

and after all, isn't that what being an artist is about?

He is the most famous artist in any point of art history.

You might have Leonardo da Vinci and a couple of others might come close.

But in terms of the most recognisable artist today, worldwide, is Banksy.

Today we can say he's definitely an artist who's here to stay.

He is the Picasso of the 21st century.

The Andy Warhol. That's not up for debate anymore.

UK graffiti artist Banksy has moved here for a month

and he's promised to surprise the city every day with a new piece of work.

His canvasses are cars and city walls.

His fans and New York detectives alike

combing the city in a hunt for the murals.

He basically did a gallery exhibit on the streets of New York

and nothing was for sale.

That did get the city kind of Banksy crazy.

A Banksy would appear and everybody would turn up taking pictures in front of it.

Head down a bit, head down a bit.

Every morning, there was like a new Banksy,

which is pretty cool.

And actually, he plays with our adrenaline levels,

he plays with the excitement he instils in the public,

who wakes up thinking, "Where has Banksy struck now?

I want to find it first. I want to be the first to report it.

I want to be the first to see it.

I'm hoping we can spot it here.

OK, here it is.

I've been looking all around for him.

Just driving around earlier today, found this one, so awesome.

Layla!

Back then in 2013, there were a few of us who followed him.

But what was so incredible was that every day,

more and more people started following him on social media.

Banksy has taken the Big Apple by storm.

I remember, 8 or maybe 10 days later,

it was on the news on every TV channel all over the world.

Banksy...

Huge murals created under cover of darkness...

You see crowds gathering.

You see people getting really excited about this treasure hunt.

"Where's Banksy? Where's Banksy?"

That's the only thing that New York City was talking about.

I haven't seen that kind of excitement in the city about something going on

and, you know, I've lived here my entire life.

My wife's cousin called me around nine, nine thirty, in the morning and said...

you know, "You have a Banksy."

And I said, "Oh, shit! Really?"

And they said, "Yeah." I said, "That's pretty cool. Let me go and see."

So I walked over here and I looked,

and all of a sudden I see the Banksy.

And there's hundreds of people and I see there's news teams starting to show up.

So we took my building engineer and we got a big piece of plexiglass,

and we came over here, and then people started yelling and screaming,

"What are you doing? You're defacing the Banksy."

And I'm like, "No, no, no. I'm the general manager of Zabars.

Zabars owns this building. We want to protect it."

-And then we got a standing ovation. -Really?

It was like everything changed in a second.

I think it's a miracle because he never got caught

and he's been doing it his whole career.

He's under the radar. He's like Superman. You just can't catch him.

You running up to somebody's property or public property

and defacing it is not my definition of art.

Graffiti does ruin people's property

and is a sign of decay and loss of control.

So the mayor may be contemptuous.

The NYPD would like to arrest him.

I remember the mayor calling a press conference

out of the blue and suddenly, the police were trying to find him,

because what he's doing really is insulting the establishment

by painting on public walls, private walls, each day.

The New York City Police Department would like to remind you,

if you see something suspicious in the station...

There was a "Catch Me If You Can" element to it.

And it's weird, with all this surveillance and everything else,

you never saw like surveillance footage of him actually

doing his work.

The public were searching for Banksy.

The authorities were searching for Banksy.

The press were searching for Banksy.

The paparazzi were hounding him.

It was worse than the British royal family.

I think that he's become so well-known that

his anonymity is now something people want to get to the bottom of

just for the sake of revealing his identity.

I can't even imagine what it must feel like to be Banksy.

To wake up every morning knowing

that the very tenet of your existence,

the core of what you are, is at threat every day.

Every day you pick up a newspaper, every day you turn a radio or television on,

it could be game over.

Is the Banksy mystery over?

No one ever knew who he is.

A blogger claims to have found out who he is.

As a journalism student, I had to come up with ideas

and articles that would attract attention online.

Me being stupid, me being young, me being a bit of an idiot,

I was like, fuck it, why don't I go after the biggest story in the world?

Not like who killed JFK, but something everybody can connect to.

Something everybody is interested in - who is Banksy?

If anyone is going to find out who Banksy is,

why can't it be some guy in his pants on a Sunday in his house, a student,

typing up like a hacker?

I felt like I was a hacker.

I'm kind of like the overweight guy eating McDonald's, you know?

This all started on January 28th, 2016.

I went to see Massive Attack in Glasgow.

The show was amazing, although I was very drunk.

And I thought to myself, "Holy shit!

Massive Attack are from Bristol. Banksy's from Bristol."

It was a general consensus that they operate in the same world

and I was like, "OK, let me see if I can find something."

One of the first places I looked at was Los Angeles, 2006.

Cos that was something that really stood out to me, when Banksy

went into Disneyland and he left

a kind of human crash doll dressed up as a Guantanamo Bay detainee.

I was like, "OK, here I have a specific more or less date about Banksy.

So did Massive Attack play a concert there?" Bingo!

Massive Attack played two concerts,

one in Anaheim and one in California, in Los Angeles.

Massive Attack were on tour in America,

and were doing a gig at the Hollywood Bowl,

in September 2006.

So, yes, it does coincide exactly with Banksy's presence

in Los Angeles.

That for me was a good starting point.

And then, in 2010, Massive Attack went on concert.

They played in San Francisco, they played in Boston.

I looked at newspaper reports from these cities.

I realised that Banksy had been there almost one day before or one day after.

OK, man, this is definitely a connection being made here.

It makes sense. Massive Attack comes as a one-night gig in New York

and, like, for the next 30 days, the city is plastered

with these crazy Banksy pieces.

These kind of like snippets of information and connections

just keep on being fed into me.

In 2008, Banksy left 14 stencils around New Orleans.

But in New Orleans, Massive Attack hadn't played a show.

If Massive Attack weren't playing a concert why was Banksy there?

Bang!

2008, Robert Del Naja, the singer's history,

Went to New Orleans to give the premiere of a documentary film about

Hurricane Katrina.

Robert Del Naja has composed music for a documentary

on the mistakes made

during the crisis management of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

And at the same time,

Banksy's street art started popping up in New Orleans,

and one of his works depicted police pillaging a shop.

Both artists were criticising the same thing at the same time.

There are very shocking similarities between the two.

For example, Robert Del Naja had no qualms about

showing images of migrants on huge screens during one of his concerts.

Banksy has also often shown his support for the migrant cause.

Robert Del Naja is clearly against the political situation in Israel.

So is Banksy.

So if they're not the same person,

then they at least have very similar political views.

There was an anti-Iraq war when Tony Blair was in power here.

It was one of the biggest political rallies in history in the UK.

And Banksy did a whole set of placards for that called "Wrong War".

-Tony! -Blair!

-Tony! -Out!

-Tony! Tony! Tony! -Out, out, out!

We know that Robert Del Naja protested against the war in Iraq

against Tony Blair in 2003.

You really feel that at different moments in history

these two people have some very strong political views in common.

I also never realised how Robert Del Naja was part of

a graffiti movement.

He, kind of, kick started the movement not only in Bristol but even in the UK.

He was one of the real original graffiti artists,

under his old moniker of Delge or 3D.

Banksy said, "3D was a big influence on me."

Robert Del Naja said, "Oh, Banksy was a big influence on me."

People always assumed that they were friends.

No one suggested they're just talking about themselves.

He's just talking about himself to throw people off the chase.

The turning point or the point where I said to myself,

"I've got him!" as if I had like a net.

I'm running behind Banksy and I'm like, "I caught him",

was in Naples.

In August 2004, Banksy left a stencil called "Madonna con la Pistola".

Robert Del Naja - funny name, Italian name.

His dad is from Naples.

And he is a crazy Napoli football fan.

And the first time that he attended the stadium

was almost the exact same time when Banksy left the stencil there.

And that's when I said to myself,

"You've fucking done it, son!" You know, I was like...

"It's him!

It is him!

Robert Del Naja is Banksy."

The world may have finally discovered the secret identity

of he renowned guerilla street artist known as Banksy.

A British student named Craig Williams proposed the theory in a blog post

back in January that Robert Del Naja of the electronic hip-hip trio Massive Attack

is behind the international works of art.

Before I even finished my journalism course,

I'd already done the biggest thing that I'll ever do in my life as a journalist.

So it was pretty fucked up, but cool by another.

Banksy and Robert Del Naja have the same political views

but if I wanted to make a joke, I could say that I share those views,

which doesn't make me Banksy.

You can look for everything they have in common,

but I don't think that's proof.

I don't think that that makes Robert and Banksy the same guy. I mean...

I would love for somebody to go deeper and say,

when was a Banksy done in a certain city

and Massive Attack was completely somewhere else?

There are definitely inconsistencies when you match the dates up.

On 20th October 2014, a new stencil appeared in Bristol:

"The Girl with Pierced Eardrum".

And the night before Massive Attack had been playing in San Francisco.

So he couldn't actually have played the night before in San Francisco

and then add a stencil on the street of Bristol.

You would never be able now to know who Banksy is.

At least 50% to 60% of my time

-was spent trying to keep him anonymous. -How?

Oh, all sorts of things. We'd do fake news stories.

You know, we were well ahead of Donald Trump on the fake news.

You know, part of it was putting out news stories.

I put... The websites and everything were in my name.

You know, lots of things we did I'm not going to tell you about.

My years with Banksy were the best years of my life.

We lived like kings but without any rules.

I've picked out some of my favourites over the years.

This is my favourite portrait that I've done.

I think we went from there to the city farm and did something really weird.

So... This was great. This was in West London.

And this is a good example of him, like, working, middle of the day.

That's not a quick stencil. That's not a five minutes and done.

That's probably an hour of him, on the street, doing a piece

with no one saying shit.

There was another time when closed off a street,

with cones with guys with hi-vis jackets,

pretending that a road was closed so he could do a big piece underneath a bridge.

All sorts of, various techniques.

I've never ever known him do anything at night.

It's like an invisibility cloak.

You put on a boiler suit

and a hi-vis jacket,

and you look like you're supposed to be where you are...

most people just walk past.

Institutions are very careful about

making sure no one steals their paintings. However,

they never had any interest in people going in there to put up a painting.

So he sort of shuffled along,

dressed in a sort of beard and mac and everything,

and put in a painting on the wall.

And, of course, it was Banksy who put it up

but already there was a bit of a team with him.

I went with him so we did a dry run the day before.

Then we went back the next day to do it for real.

So I had a little camcorder, so I was filming us as we went up the steps.

I go to get into the Tate,

the security guard stops me, says, "You're not allowed to film."

-I'm like, "Shit!"

It's like, if we don't film it, then it's all for nothing.

I end up flicking the lens cap off the camcorder

and film it all with the camera down by my hip,

just hoping that there was some footage, which there was in the end.

Everything was kind of planned out with meticulous precision.

Nothing was really left to chance.

There wasn't many things that happened that weren't,

like, thought through and planned.

I mean, it's almost part of his kind of modus operandi

to choose remote areas.

They seem random but obviously they aren't. They're quite premeditated.

Banksy is a genius of situations.

He says the right thing

in the right place

at the right time.

This little cat appeared amongst within ruins

of the city of Gaza after a series of bombings some years ago

and everyone was asking: "What's that kitten doing there?"

And that's when he said:

"The thing that's most searched for and looked at globally on the internet

are cats and kittens.

I've put a cat there because I want you all to take an interest

in what's happening over there.

Rub your noses in it, look at what's happening over there."

The work he's done in Palestine has drawn so much world attention

for the young people, who would never have engaged

with what Palestine is, what Israel is.

Are suddenly aware of this and I think his crusade to make that visible

and to highlight the injustice that's happening there, I think's admirable.

Banksy has set up the hotel in Bethlehem.

As a political statement, it's the big attraction

to Western holidaymakers.

The hotel is very special because

it is the hotel with the worst view in the whole world.

So it attracts these people and whilst they're staying there they get to hear

about the exact political situation of the Palestinian people,

which isn't normally reflected on the television news particularly well

or in a balanced fashion against the other side of the story.

Most people might have a moment of genius once in their lives,

but he has them all the time.

He put up this installation in Venice,

showing massive cruise ships coming into port,

even though Venice is in danger of being totally destroyed.

He set up his installation in St Mark's Square.

One week later, two cruise ships crashed into each other.

Everyone went crazy.

I mean, he couldn't have guessed that would happen.

It's insane,

but each time, he gets it exactly right.

We had this idea of raising money for

a project to provide fresh water for one village in Chiapas.

The Zapatistas are an armed social movement

who rose up against the Mexican state, against 500 years of oppression.

And I think Banksy felt an affinity for the Zapatista cause, as we all did.

Banksy painted some murals in those communities.

Did his research before he went out there.

So he looked at artistic tradition that there is out there.

This was the first time he'd gone abroad and done painting abroad,

and tried to shine a spotlight on a struggle in a different part of the world.

Of course, after that, he went to various other places around the world.

" Season's greetings" was the only comment from Banksy

as he posted this video online, confirming he was behind this gift

to the people of Port Talbot.

At first glance, the boy is playing in the snow,

but the work expands to reveal a burning skip and the ash it emits.

It's the kind of political messaging that's often in his work

and references the impact of Port Talbot's industrial skyline.

Banksy created a piece criticising climate change

and which criticised pollution levels coming from industries at Port Talbot,

which is a very polluted area.

And everyone thought: "What is this place?

Why Port Talbot?"

People started looking on a map, they started searching informations.

And that's how Banksy uses his notoriety,

and it's actually a very powerful weapon.

I imagine that's part of the excitement from his point of view.

I don't know how much exploration he does, but to find areas,

knowing there will be publicity and excitement.

It almost forces the media then to travel to these places and explore

little pockets of the UK, so it's quite a clever concept really,

to actually enforce people to be part of his plan.

What did you guys think when you saw it for the first time?

Well, I thought perhaps anybody could do that.

-Shows I don't know anything about art.

But, yeah, the more I've looked at it...

I've come to appreciate it now and, uh...

-Do you think Banksy's here today? -Is he?!

No. Well, I'm asking you. Do you think he's here?

-Well, we don't know. Nobody knows. -You could be interviewing him!

-There's a lot of intrigue around that. -Yeah.

So, you know, Banksy puts them up on walls

-in places that you think are safe. -Yeah.

-And I come along and take them away. -

And that's what gives you great pleasure?

It gives me... As I say, I own about 20 originals.

And the trouble is, a lot of his artwork has got tagged or damaged

by other artists so now it's a case of moving it here into town,

and then it will be permanently on display where people can just see it all the time.

Bullshit!

You know, if someone walks into a warehouse

and find a Banksy sprayed on a gas cannister,

fair enough, yeah, but if you're going round ripping it off a public wall

and taking it out the side of somewhere, you're making the city a poorer place.

It's just a very 21st-century, self-centred, narcissistic thing to do.

And they should be punished.

Corporally. Death.

And there we are. We have Banksy going to his new home.

But it doesn't matter because if we turn around by here,

we have Banksy on my wall.

They're now moving it and putting it inside a building.

That's not street art, it's building art.

It's not the same. It's got no meaning downtown.

It was done here to cover the steelworks. It's got a meaning.

It should be left out on the street for everybody to enjoy.

That's what he's done it for.

Banksy doesn't do it to sell them.

You know, he proved that with his painting that he shredded.

Um, no, all they want to do is make money from it.

I will miss him now.

I'll be opening my gate and what have I got?

A big hole in the wall!

Yes. That's not good.

That's not good.

Banksy is so careful about where pieces should be placed

and he doesn't particularly mind if they stay there only for a time,

but they shouldn't be taken out of that place

for gosh knows how much money.

I don't know what he's doing.

Is he taking it down?

Artwork attributed to British artist Banksy

was stolen at some point on Saturday night in Paris.

Exclusive video of guys who decided to scale a building,

cut down the latest Banksy work and...

Right now, Banksy is one of the ten most highly rated artists

in the contemporary art market.

As soon as one of Banksy's pieces is taken down from a wall,

someone sells it at auction.

I think his work is more wanted than he is.

The thieves tore off the entire door.

This stencil piece using white paint

was drawn on one of the back doors of Bataclan

in memory of the victims killed at the music venue

on 13th November 2015 by a group of terrorists.

Having a Banksy that's taken off a wall and being sold,

I just think is morally and ethically really wrong.

For a decade, I was making money out of Banksy street works

and I saw absolutely nothing wrong with what I was doing.

I recall sitting in my delicatessen down in Kent,

and I got a call from a colleague saying, "Have you seen the new Banksy?"

And I was like, "Really? Another Banksy?"

And by this point, I was sort of, not famous for it, but I was known,

notorious for the guy who goes and takes Banksy's away and upsets everyone.

And I said, "Send me a picture." And he sent me a picture of this

really ugly mural on a wall.

But I saw its potential to make considerable money.

"Art Buff" is an elderly lady.

She's got one of those headsets on

that you go to a gallery and somebody's telling what the artwork means,

and in the front there is a plinth.

And the plinth is empty.

My intention was to make as much money as I possibly could.

I had good contacts at the Miami Art Fair. I'd been there a number of times.

I had the credentials necessary,

and I agreed that we would attempt to remove the piece

with a team of guys who can pretty much move anything on the planet.

I should have perhaps realised what they were going to do because

they come in and start covering the area with scaffold

and chopping the Banksy out of the wall.

We started about eight o'clock in the morning.

As the noise echoed across Folkestone,

suddenly more and more people started appearing.

And it was clear that they were carrying protest placards.

They were vehemently against what was going on.

It felt like we were being robbed of Folkestone's Banksy.

You know, we believed it belonged to our town.

You know, we wanted to benefit from it

and to see it every day.

We could be quite smug. "We've got a Banksy. Have you got a Banksy?"

It was a bit like that.

I mean, these were relatively middle-class, working-class,

small-town folk who suddenly turned into these sort of harridans and monsters

screaming abuse at us and my construction guys.

I mean, it wasn't just verbal abuse, it was physical abuse.

It was just, "No, why are you taking it? How can it be taken away?"

And I think the fact that everyone felt it was being taken away for money

was even more frustrating.

Everybody ran up there. They're trying to stop it happening.

And then Robin Barton, "Bankrobber" as he's know, a gallerist,

he is there, walking around, winding everybody up

and telling them that he had total rights to take it.

Cos the more upset you are, the more noise there is.

The more noise there is, the more media there is.

The more media there is, the more value there is.

It was a long, long day. I mean, it was 14 hours of drilling and cutting.

And we finally pulled the last piece of the wall out around about sunset.

And off it flew out to Miami.

By putting it in Miami,

the contrast would be so great from where it originally came from.

A broken down, Third World town of Folkestone

and then you've got the glitz and glamour of Miami.

And having all the Americans staring at it was quite appealing to me.

As you came into Art Miami, there it was, boomph, right in the middle,

with a price tag of half a million dollars on it.

There's of course a certain irony about selling an artwork

for a huge amount of money to a collector about the vacuousness

of the collecting of artwork and how value is put on art and so on.

But it was painted to go on that wall. It was painted to be in an urban setting.

And we'd actively got involved in trying to bring it back.

Because it's an illegal act and put out there in the street,

covertly without permissions,

there is no copyright issue whatsoever.

The person who owns that wall, that door, that window, that floor

is the owner of that artwork and it gives me the right,

on behalf of those freeholders, to sell the works.

-So it's legal? -It's completely legal as long as,

and this is the critical mass, as long as the freeholder

can prove without question they are the freeholder.

But that doesn't tell you who emotional owns it.

It's emotionally owned by the people of the town going,

"This is Folkestone's Banksy.

I'm from Folkestone. It's my Banksy."

Whilst I was sunning myself in Miami and drinking I know not what,

I got a lawyer's letter saying we have discovered

there is a greater freeholder and that the Godden family

were indeed not the freeholders of the building.

At this point, it was game over.

I was forced to dip my hands in my pocket

and pay for it to be returned to Folkestone.

It's good that we've got one, it's good that we've kept it.

No one can touch it now. It's our Banksy.

Owned by Folkestone.

Hands off.

So you can see that the whole piece looks amazing,

but if you get slightly closer up, you can see there's this chop here,

that the paint is cracked and it's where the saw came

and just cut this out of the wall.

And that's, um, you know...

The thing about Banksy is the story is as much of the artwork.

It's never just the painting. It's what happens afterwards.

How people talk about it. People demonstrating on the streets.

People saying, "That's ours and you can't take it!"

So I don't mind these cuts, cos I think people will be able to

understand the story better with these little marks that are going through it.

Don't mess with Folkestone, that's the moral of the story,

cos we love art in this community.

I don't feel guilty about anything I did in Folkestone.

And whereas Banksy clearly set his stall up as being Robin Hood of the art world,

I suddenly realised, there I was, the Sheriff of Nottingham.

I was the bad guy, he was the good guy.

Now, I watch movies. Who do I want to be? The bad guy.

Banksy, I suppose, is up here just looking down at this little

thing he made. It's just a massive old circus.

-What do we want? -Banksy back!

-When do we want it? -Now!

Save our Banksy!

Society has embraced him to such a point

where he has become part of the establishment.

Possibly something he'd kick against if he could,

but I'm not sure that creating a prank at Sotheby's with "Girl with Balloon"

is a good way of distancing yourself from all the things that he dislikes.

A stunt like no other.

The iconic image known as "Girl with the Balloon" self-destructs.

A Banksy painting sells at auction for $1.4 million.

I'm frustrated that it didn't shred completely because I think

a wholly shredded picture with just bits and pieces

lying on the floor is not worth much money.

I mean, if the buyer got these bits and pieces, what she supposed to do?

Stick them together?

It wasn't a destructive process. It was a change.

And, of course, in the end, he gave the painting a new name,

a new date and now it's a different work.

So, you criticise the market but you give it what it wants at the same time.

So, yes, I think I found that was a bit...

a bit lame really.

Since Sotheby's,

there's been a change in the public's perception of him.

Because, yes, he's great, yes, he's got things to say,

but his criticism of the market,

which is what makes him popular and gives his artwork value,

is beginning to make people wonder.

They are starting to doubt his sincerity.

After the event, we had probably around fifty to sixty

enquiries on Banksy "Girl with Balloon" print.

So, yes, the demand went sky high,

um, especially with "Girl with Balloon", um...

Does he make money from that?

Indirectly, I'm sure he does.

-How? -Um...

-I can't say. -You can't?

No, because I'm very good friends with my collectors

-and they can't see me saying that, sorry. -OK.

He's become a capitalist, like...

like his good friend Robin Barton.

There was so much money being made by Banksy and by his entourage,

and by his colleagues, friends,

that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That you become the very person that you didn't like when you started out.

You become the person sitting in an ivory tower.

Can you have a relevant voice

when you're so removed from the very thing you started talking about?

He still has an agent. He has a manager.

There's definitely a lot of people working really hard to protect him.

Banksy is not the guy with the spray can any more.

He's a lot bigger than that.

Banksy is so famous now and he keeps putting himself in situations

and doing really big things that we deserve to know who he is.

And I think the journalist who one day will reveal him will be...

will go down in the history books for being the guy or the girl who

revealed who Banksy was.

My source, um,

decided that he wants to stay anonymous.

He's a forensic expert.

Due diligence.

Looks through companies and the owners of companies

to see the trails there.

I'd like to remain anonymous

because I just don't want any kind of exposure.

It's just an itch I needed to scratch and I was just intrigued by the whole thing.

I don't need any kind of hate mail for exposing Banksy,

cos there would probably be a bunch of people who were very angry

if it turned out I was right.

Banksy has just released a documentary,

"Exit Through The Gift Shop".

And it got a bit of noise at that time

and then it got nominated for an Academy Award,

and he was still trying to claim that he was

some sort of anonymity,

which is impossible if you're making any film like that.

As soon as business is involved,

and you want to make some money out of that,

you have to register companies and the money has to go somewhere.

And then there is a paper trail.

So I looked up what the production company was.

It was a company called Paranoid Pictures.

And if you look through this company document

and the annual return,

you'll find that it's actually owned by another company

called Pest Control Office Ltd.

This is a company that is solely there to verify Banksy

works of art to make sure that they're not fakes

and they've really actually been made by Banksy himself.

So this company is the owner of Paranoid Pictures.

But if you look through the annual return here...

this in itself is owned by a company called Picturesonwalls Ltd.

So if you go to Picturesonwalls Ltd and looking through this annual return...

at the time of my investigation,

you can see that the sole owner is Jamie Hewlett.

Jamie Hewlett, the founder of Gorillaz.

It makes sense.

Gorillaz, Banksy. He's in their music video.

He is... Yeah.

I... I just thought, "This is him."

Gorillaz is a fake band.

They're not actually humans. They're meant to be these characters,

which is very close to what Banksy's doing as well.

The other guy in Gorillaz, Damon Albarn,

has another band called Blur

and Banksy made the front cover for their album.

This Blur album cover

is designed by Banksy himself.

If you look at this still here from one of the Gorillaz's music videos,

that is a Banksy in the actual music video itself.

And it was surprising to see that everything just kind of added up.

Another thing... I may be clutching at straws here,

but a few years ago when Banksy opened up his hotel,

some tourist hosted video footage of who he or she believed

may have been Banksy spotted.

This person had been uncovered doing these graffiti stencils

around the corner from the hotel.

He actually looks like Jamie Hewlett from certain kind of facial similarities.

Wow! I'm gonna reveal who Banksy is.

It was too good, the information was too good not to publish.

Since I made a bit of a noise,

the very next annual return, in 2017.

If you look here,

Jamie Hewlett has transferred all his shares

to someone called Marcus Samuel Chambers.

So if I was suspicious, which of course I am,

there has been a reaction to my action.

It's a very kind of fun idea, like using A.I. to see where people are

based in the world at any one point but this is a pretty black and white theory

which you can't deny.

Joanna Brooks emailed me... She's Banksy's publicist.

...saying Jamie Hewlett is not Banksy.

But she made a mistake and she spelt Hewlett with an "i" not an "e".

Which is wrong.

So I thought, "Is this a sneaky way of not lying?"

So if we do reveal him now and we said, "But you lied!"

She will say, "No, cos I didn't spell it the right way."

If it's not Jamie Hewlett, I don't think I believe the other theories more.

I went through every single story that had been written on Banksy to get clues.

Where he had been, who his friends were.

There was one picture that supposedly was Banksy in Jamaica

and it had been published in the Evening Standard,

and then it sort of mysteriously disappeared

and nobody knew who owed the copyright any more.

It was part of the mystery around Banksy.

Finally, I found someone who knew who he was.

Someone that had interviewed Banksy,

that knew Banksy, that knew who Banksy was

and told me that he was called Robin Gunningham.

First of all, I found out everything about Robin Gunningham I could.

His birth certificate, his parents' names.

I did his full family tree with his sisters and cousins and relatives.

And then I looked on the Electoral Roll.

And all the places he'd lived seemed to be places where Banksy had lived.

So I was fairly confident when I went down to Bristol

with a team of people that I worked very well with to prove it.

I wanted to do it quickly because I didn't want another journalist to get the story.

We spoke to someone called Luke Egan,

who denied knowing Robin Gunningham, but he'd lived with him.

We spoke to a woman who had moved into a flat after Robin Gunningham had left,

and she had discovered some old discarded Banksy drawings.

I think the final piece in the jigsaw

was the fact that one of the neighbours of where Robin grew up

identified that initial photograph from Jamaica as Robin Gunningham.

And I interviewed someone who went to school with him

and he had a photograph of him at school

and it looked similar to the picture that was taken in Jamaica.

And when I spoke to Mr Gunningham,

he was laughing and smiling and saying, "I can't comment."

And I said, "Well, look, if your son is a teacher in Birmingham,

you must tell me because I'm going to put in the paper on Sunday that he's Banksy."

And he just said, "I can't possibly say anything."

Nobody, apart from Banksy's father,

would have played games with me the way he did.

If you are familiar with the artist known as Banksy,

he's never publicly shown his face.

Now though, Banksy may have actually been unmasked.

Who is Banksy?

Banksy's name could be Robin Gunningham, a native of Bristol.

The article claims Robin Gunningham, who's now 35,

was great at art at school.

Banksy had a background that was posh and privileged

if this article is to be believed.

He went to school here, the Bristol Cathedral School.

It's hardly the background of someone who's made his name

from being "hip" and "street".

Geographic profiling is a criminal investigative methodology.

It was designed to help prioritise suspects

and manage information in a large-scale serial crime case.

So if we have a serial murder, there's a pattern to where they hunt

and the locations where the offender is most likely based.

I was a member of the Vancouver Police Department

and because I had a background in mathematics,

I wondered about what you might be able to extract, in terms of information,

from a pattern of crime locations.

What I'm showing right now is the top five per cent of the area

for the art that Banksy did while he was in New York City.

I was able to find information on 31 of his graffiti artworks.

So I put it into the Rigel System, which I have open here.

And you can see here Manhattan.

And the dark orange shows the most probable area for Banksy's base.

This could be where he was staying in a hotel,

or if he was crashing at a friend's apartment or condo,

between Union Square Park, Washington Square Park

and it's roughly northern Greenwich Village.

Well, it doesn't tell us anything about Gunningham or about other suspects,

but it would be, um, if he were still in New York,

where you would probably want to focus your search efforts for him.

Now, if no one tried to find out who Banksy was,

well, it would all be rather boring, wouldn't it?

This map here shows you, through the red dots,

locations associated with Banksy's artwork.

Blue dots, locations associated with Robin Gunningham,

such as, where did he live? Where did he go to school?

Where did he work? Anything that you could associate with him.

If we had multiple Banksy suspects,

we could see which ones came out best but we don't.

So the idea is that you look at this and you see, well, that compared quite well.

So that elevated the probability

of him being the correct suspect to a certain degree.

We're not proving anything here.

All we're doing is saying, here's some evidence that either supports

the Gunningham theory or doesn't support it.

In the end, it supported it quite well.

Yeah, this is a science used to find criminals,

instead used to catch an artist,

the person behind this - Banksy.

And scientists say they're 90% sure they have their man.

The spatial evidence of the artworks

supports the theory that he is the suspect, that he is Banksy.

Mystery solved? Don't bank on it.

Robin Gunningham, this "public schoolboy".

I don't think that this person ever existed.

I have a feeling that's another one of our fake news things maybe.

Maybe it's not.

There is regular speculation about his identity,

probably in order to blur the lines.

I think he's probably got something to do with that.

Everyone likes to have another theory about Banksy.

There's nothing saying...

we can guarantee this is a man.

The weird thing is, like, the Banksy pieces, anybody could do it.

If Banksy gave me the stencil and I bought some spray paint,

I could go out and do it.

Banksy might have operatives all over the world.

Maybe he's got like sleeper cells in every city.

He's almost definitely hiding somewhere amongst it all.

Maybe there isn't even one Banksy.

Maybe the mastermind is actually

a whole group of, I don't know, 10, 15 or 20 people.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes

regarding Banksy.

Who is he? Actually, I don't really care. Not that bothered.

So, I'm not giving the game away.

It would be like telling a small child that Santa Claus didn't exist.

And plus, I think, the general public made him.

Like, they made this folk hero.

Yeah? And the last thing they want is for someone to blow that myth.

It has been a very curious experience

because there seems to be

a sort of conspiracy to suggest that I'm wrong.

People are like, "You're a fucking idiot. You've ruined Banksy for me,

because now I know what he looks like."

My retort is to them is, like,

"Do you know fucking Picasso?" "Yes."

"Do you like Picasso?" "Yes."

"Do you know what fucking Picasso looks like?"

"Yes."

"What fucking difference does it make?"

I think the fact people are upset about it

is because there's like a strong political message.

They don't want to see the face that tells them it.

They want just to be told it by someone they don't know.

Everybody wins with him not being known.

Would Banksy have the same impact if we knew his name?

Well, probably not.

It's just like Jack the Ripper.

Jack the Ripper's one of the most infamous serial killers in history.

Maybe people call him the first serial killer,

but that's not true, not by a long shot.

But he is perhaps the most famous,

and one of the reasons he's the most famous is he was never caught.

I suppose at those kind of low times people reach for the fictional world

and the fantasy,

and they like to feel that there's some kind of

rescue just around the corner and there's hope somehow.

Even now that he has a huge possibility of generating money,

he's stayed very true to the roots

that he would have grown up around in Bristol.

Which is a large community of people who are...

helping each other in a social and cultural way,

and the fact that he is now finding ways to

benefit hundreds of people from this incredible achievement that's he's made,

I think is just a fantastic story.

The renowned and illusive artist Banksy is weighing in

to help a cash-struck boys' club in Bristol.

This youth club was another way where he said, "Right, I'm going to help them."

It was Sunday, April the 13th.

It was around one o'clock in the afternoon

and I parked just outside the boys' club gates.

And I noticed immediately in a doorway this rather amazing stencil.

As I was sat there waiting, I couldn't really take my eyes off it

and I said to my wife, I'm like, "That looks like a Banksy."

My son came past.

He rang me. He said, "Dad, you're not going to believe this.

I think we've got a Banksy outside the club."

I said, "Oh, don't be so stupid. Don't be so foolish."

I wasn't 100% sure. I said, "If it's what I think it is,

then you need to get that protected." You know?

And when I got there, I thought,

"Oh, it looks good. It might be a Banksy, but, I mean, I don't much about Banksy's."

All I could see was this young couple.

They both have their mobile phones. They were both, in effect,

supposed to be looking into each other's loving eyes.

And, in fact, they weren't, they were looked at each other's phones.

It really was quite a poignant statement about young people today,

that the mobile phone can be a little bit more important than the human being.

Somebody would've had to done it, so I thought I'd go and check my CCTV.

A white van pulled up and parked just by

what would be the place where the "Mobile Lovers" was put.

Two men got out the van. I couldn't see their faces.

They had hi-vis jackets on and they had helmets on.

They just looked like any work team.

A gentleman took a picture, drove off.

And then at 12 o'clock on the 15th,

is when it became known to the public and the world, basically,

that there was a new Banksy for people to see.

And that's when my story began.

In April, a picture appeared here overnight,

created by the secretive street artist Banksy.

With a steady stream of visitors coming to see the latest Banksy creation...

There had been a period of time where no new Banksy artworks had appeared

in Bristol for a while,

and so I was very keen to see the new artwork.

I actually thought a murder had been committed outside,

because I'd never seen so many people with cameras

taking pictures of "Mobile Lovers".

And I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, "Whoa! This really is a Banksy."

And we've left it there for two or three days.

I mean, are we mad?

James, back the other way!

Don't forget your arms. Keep 'em moving! Come on, you can!

Well done! Keep going!

As soon as he realised it was a Banksy,

he knew that he was sat on something that could save the club.

So, you're gonna take it out nice and slowly.

The problem with the clubs were that government at the time

and local council were cutting funding to youth projects.

Boxing really is a fantastic sport.

It's something that is always done in a boxing club, OK?

We use sport as a platform to engage young people.

To give them something to hang their coat on.

This is their place to just grow, nurture and develop at their pace,

doing what they would like to do where they know they'll be looked after.

So I thought, "Do you know what?

We need to take 'Mobile Lovers' off the wall and we're going to sell it,

so that we can save the club."

And then we had all of the negative press and people writing on the Facebook page,

"What kind of example are you setting for others?"

"You should be ashamed."

People have taken to Twitter as soon as they heard this news today.

Some people are calling Dennis Stinchcombe a vulture.

I guess, street art, they do it on the streets

so that people will have more access to it, so it's like a bit of a shame.

It's gone already before anyone's got a chance to look at it, so it's wrong.

Go left!

I started getting death threats.

What gave me that right? And it went on and on and on.

And this is against a man that's all he's ever done for 30 years is give

to the people of Bristol and you've got people saying he should be killed.

And that was the hard thing, for me.

And finally, the most important thing that happened,

with all the months of arguments

and discussions and dialogues and everything else,

was the day that this letter came through the door.

I got a phone call from Dad and he's like,

"Sean, you're never going to believe it. I've only got a letter from Banksy."

It was like, wow! This is it or it's not it.

It could be ours, it might not.

And it's almost like I wanted to read it but I didn't want to read it.

But there it is now in front of me and it's like, "Oh, my God!"

"Private and confidential.

Dear Dennis, I hope this finds you well.

As you know, I recently painted on a doorway near the club.

This was meant to be a small visual gift for the area.

But, apparently, a financial one would have been much more useful.

I don't normally admit to committing criminal damage,

but seeing as it looks like charges won't be brought any time soon,

you have my blessing to do what you feel is right with this piece.

I'm a great admirer of the work done at the club

and will be chuffed if this can help in some way.

Your tenacity in the past few weeks has made for an entertaining spectator sport.

I assume you're familiar with the quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln.

'Things may come to those who wait

but only the things left behind by those who hustle.'

Best wishes, Banksy." And, of course, he signed it at the bottom.

This letter was incredibly important and on that day I read it...

Wow! It was like...

I was so happy for him.

Because no one deserves to be ridiculed on social media

because of a picture, because he's seen an opportunity to save

a club that he loves with every part of his body.

He'll never be away from that place.

That's where his soul's going to be. That's where his heart is now

and that's where his heart and soul's gonna die.

This piece of graffiti sprayed on a boarded-up doorway

is now officially worth £403,000.

The money itself won't just benefit one club here in Bristol.

It will benefit up to six, seven or eight of them.

It will go far and wide and it will touch an awful lot of people.

It is a very good news story in this city.

This was the most direct way that he had used the value of his art

for a social purpose.

I think we'd lose some of the magic if somebody

reveals who he is.

I know exactly who he is cos he was a member of my club when he was a lad.

-And I'm not telling you that. -Why?

I can't.

Everybody I meet goes, "I know somebody who knows Banksy."

Then there's a few people who go, "I know Banksy."

But they can't tell you. Really, I mean, you know, so...

I mean, Donald Trump would love it.

Right, he's always on about leakers. Banksy has no leakers.

How does it do that? The White House is loaded with leakers!

Banksy, no leakers!

Even if he wanted to come out and become Banksy,

no one's going to believe it.