My brush with Banksy

And the BBC’s decision not to disclose his identity.

Always there is a frisson when Banksy unveils a new artwork. Yet even by his epic standards, the latest installation in the heart of London is an electrifying coup executed with fabulously subversive subterfuge. In Waterloo Place, enclosed by buildings which stand as landmarks to “Rule Britannia” imperialism, he reminds us of the perils of blind nationalism. The sculpture features a standard-bearer striding headlong, but head-covered, over a plinth that presumably represents a precipice. It upends the meaning of the jingoistic phrase “wrapped in the flag.” I love it. But, then, I have always been a fanboy.

Like Banksy, I hail from Bristol in the West Country. His renegade international success has long been the source of immense hometown pride. Even after all these years, glimpsing one of his early works while walking or driving through the city is an unalloyed joy. When in 2009 he transformed our drab municipal Art Gallery and Museum into a treasure trove of his work, it placed Bristol on the global cultural map. Better still was “Dismaland”, which in 2015 turned the old open-air pool at Weston-Super-Mare, our closest seaside town on the Bristol Riviera, into an Orwellian “bemusement park,” which seemed to pre-empt the dystopian age into which we were about to enter.

So imagine my joy, not long after taking up a new post as the BBC’s New York correspondent, when Banksy announced he was embarking on a residency in the city. Each day, over the course of a month, he unveiled a new artwork or installation, which was no small feat in one of the most densely populated and heavily policed cities on the planet. Launched in October 2013, he titled it “Better Out Then In,” a play on Paul Cézanne’s observation: “All pictures, painted inside, in the studio, will never be as good as those done outside.”

His first work poked gentle fun at a “Graffiti is a Crime” sign put up by the New York authorities. Day three was a stencil-work of a dog peeing on a fire hydrant, accompanied by the caption: “You complete me.” Day 11 was a slaughterhouse truck filled with stuffed animal toys entitled “Sirens of the Lambs.” Day 13 was his most newsworthy effort: a pop-art art stall that appeared for a time on Fifth Avenue next to Central Park, where tourists were offered what looked like cheap Banksy knock-offs at sixty bucks a throw. Later, it was revealed they were the real deal, and valued at tens of thousands of dollars. A couple visiting from New Zealand had the good sense to buy a couple, and used the proceeds they made through auction to make a downpayment on a new home.

At the BBC, we were all over it, and this artistic scavenger hunt became enormous fun to cover. Towards the end of the first week, Banksy’s PR team even got in touch to say how much he appreciated our coverage. Thrilled he had even noticed, I explained the Bristol connection and gushed about my coverage being a labour of love. Then I asked for a small favour. Could Banksy paint something in our neighbourhood? Dumbo next to Brooklyn Bridge. Watch this space, I was told.

On Day 6, an animation appeared online entitled “Rebel Rocket Attack.” It depicted real footage of turban-wearing insurgents firing a surface-to-air missile into the sky, and downing an unidentifiable flying object. Was it a bird of was it a plane? No, it turned out to be Disney’s loveable airborne elephant, Dumbo. Clearly, the animation had been in the works long before our conversation. Nonetheless, I regarded it as the consummation of my bromance with Banksy.

At the end of the month, the residency came to an end. The Banksy buzz which had energised the world’s most energetic city fizzled out. But I kept in touch with his PR team. When other, lesser-known artists in their stable mounted exhibitions in New York, I happily went along. But I confess to having an ulterior motive. If ever Banksy broke cover, I was hoping, as a fellow Bristolian, to land the BBC world exclusive interview. That, in West Country speak, would be lush.

The years went by. Donald Trump replaced Barack Obama in the White House. Then, early one morning in March 2018, I was awoken by a phone call from Britain. Banksy’s PR team wanted to give me a heads-up. That day, he would unveil a fresh artwork somewhere in New York. All would become clear, with details to come. Naturally, I envisioned a Banksy broadside against Trump, and rang my editors in London to reserve a slot on the evening bulletins. The world’s most famous artist on the world’s most powerful man. “And finally….” stories do not come much better than that.

Later that morning, Banksy left his first clue that he had returned to the city. A small work of graffiti on the corner of 14th Street and Sixth Avenue, featuring a rat running, hamster-like, inside a clock. Crowds gathered. Excitement mounted. But for us, it was a reminder that the minutes were ticking by. We needed to get a hurry on. If we were to film and edit our report in time for the BBC’s flagship news show, The Ten o’clock news, I told his PR team, then we needed to find out sooner rather than later the location of the main artwork A few minutes later, I was privy to the secret. It was at “The Houston Bowery Wall”, a long-established mural site that had featured the work of artists such Shepard Fairey, of Obama “Hope” fame, Keith Haring and the Japanese street artist Aiko Nakagawa.

Our bureau in Lower Manhattan was not far away. We got there quickly, beating everyone to the punch. Confronting us on that giant billboard, however, was not a treatise on Trump, but an image of the Kurdish artist Zehra Dogan. For painting a war-torn Kurdish town, which was partly destroyed by the Turkish military, she had been imprisoned by the Turkish authorities for two years, nine months and 22 days. Admirably, Banksy wanted to draw much-needed attention to her plight. For sure, the freshly-painted mural, Free Zehra Dogan, was a stunning and powerful work. But I knew the main TV BBC bulletins in London would not be interested. After all, I had promised Banksy’s take on Trump.

Banksy, Free Zehra Dogan Photo credit: The Houston Bowery Wall.

Before breaking the news to London - or breaking the non-news, as it were - we noticed a security guard wearing a fluorescent yellow jacket patrolling the sidewalk. The artist who painted the mural, he explained, had told him crowds would soon descend. The media, too. What, we asked, did the artist look like? Then, without missing a beat, he pointed to a cafe over the road, where a middle-aged man wearing a black beanie and a dishevelled grey coat was just leaving with a piping hot takeaway coffee. That, he said, was the artist. His young female assistant was walking, jauntily, alongside.

With my cameraman, we set off in hot pursuit. Unaware that we hurtling down the street towards him, the man got into a battered people mover and started the engine. His assistant placed her coffee on the roof of the car before opening the door. Then, seeing the cameraman, the artist panically told his assistant get in and to slam the door. As she did so, I leant in the still open door and hurriedly explained that I was from the BBC and a fellow West Countryman. “Sir, I’m a Bristolian,” were my embarrassing exact words. Fancy calling Banksy “sir.” At that, he put the car into gear and floored it. We filmed him speeding down Houston Street, the takeaway coffee flying comically off the roof.

I rang my bureau chief in Washington and the editor of the Ten o’clock news in London. I had good news and bad. I could not deliver Banksy’s take on Trump. But I reckoned we had a world exclusive. We had caught Banksy in the act. The man we had filmed even had fresh paint on his fingers.

The hand of Banksy?

His PR team said that Banksy had already left New York and that these were assistants adding finishing touches. But was that a cover story? Banksy operates in such a secret world or smoke and mirrors. Back in 2008, moreover, a British tabloid had published a picture purporting to be “Banksy” as a school boy. The man we had filmed bore a strong resemblance, and fitted the age profile of Banksy.

Then came the institutional and personal dilemma. Should we out the man we filmed or not? Or at least pose the question on air: is this Banksy? As a fellow Bristolian, I did not want to be the journalist who revealed his identity. It would compromise his future work and blunt his political edge. But then, again, we could hardly unsee what we had just seen - and, more importantly, filmed. Journalists are not in the suppression business, although there are often good reasons for not disclosing everything we know (as a young reporter, I discovered a senior figure in the UK Labour party was having an affair with his secretary, a scandal which years later became a front page splash on the front page of the News of the World).

Banksy had always played a cat and mouse game with the media. This time, it seemed, he had been rumbled - although only with the help from the PR team, which, again, made things more morally and personally complicated.

Minutes later, a phone call came through from London. A senior colleague told me that his daughter had accompanied him to work that day, and thought it was wrong to unveil Banksy. We should not be the news organisation, she reckoned, to tell kids there was no Father Christmas. It was an understandable point of view, I said, but perhaps we should get a second opinion. The BBC’s then arts editor entered the fray, explaining that whenever he asked audiences if they wanted to find out Banksy’s true identity, they all cried out no. In a culture fixated by fame, namelessness evidently held an even higher currency. The BBC’s then head of news agreed. So we buried the footage.

I mention all this because the news organisation, Reuters, recently decided to reveal what they claim to be his true identity in an 8,000 word article that followed a painstaking investigation. You can read it here. Which news organisation got it right?

I missed out on what might have been a global scoop, but saved myself from hometown ignominy. And since then, I have remained a Banksy fan boy rather than a regretful unmasker. For me, then, his latest work has personal meaning. The identity of that stand-bearer is shrouded. The figure that so many are straining their necks to see remains anonymous.