How we recognized Banksy as a pleasant middle-class boy referred to as Robin 16 years in the past… however the at world refuses to just accept it as a result of the ‘thriller’ is such a money cow

Had Banksy, the millionaire graffiti artist, been lastly unmasked?

There have been a lot who thought so only a few days in the past, when, amid feverish pleasure, a cumbersome grey-haired man in shades was pictured engaged on a brand new piece of avenue artwork in north London.

The mural in query, a tree design in vivid inexperienced to mark the primary day of spring, was undoubtedly by Banksy. And this was the clearest image of the ‘artist’ but.

Alas, the suspect turned out to be a 67-year-old builder referred to as George Georgiou, a person who boasts he’s with no inventive bone in his physique.

Which suggests the ‘thriller’, if that is what it’s, lives on — though for us, the true puzzle is why anybody ought to suppose there is a single drop of intrigue left to be squeezed from Britain’s most well-known ‘guerrilla’ artist.

As a result of it’s now 16 years since he was comprehensively outed in The Mail on Sunday due to our year-long investigation.

We have been clear then that Banksy is neither riddle nor enigma however a 50-year-old man referred to as Robin Gunningham. 

We’re simply as clear at the moment — and have a mountain of proof saying so.

We all know, for instance, that the privately educated artist grew up within the Bristol suburbs, went to the Cathedral Faculty and is married to a former Labour Social gathering researcher referred to as Pleasure Millward.

We all know that, for many years, Banksy’s each motion has adopted that of Gunningham.

The proof continues to build up together with, we will now reveal, graffiti signed by Banksy which has been discovered within the storage of his dad and mom’ former dwelling — the house of Mr and Mrs Peter Gunningham.

But at the moment, 1 / 4 of a century because the first work appeared in his dwelling metropolis, the weary fantasy persists that nobody really is aware of who he is likely to be.

A torrent of intrigue and hypothesis greets every new work.

Considered as a cross between the Scarlet Pimpernel and Robin Hood, Banksy has acquired close to cult standing, lauded for holding the mighty to account with spray paint earlier than retreating again into the city undergrowth.

Who else may command £18.5million at Sotheby’s for a half-shredded art work, Love is within the Bin?

‘Guerrilla’ artwork seems to be profitable, by the best way — at the moment Banksy’s total fortune stands at an estimated £50million.

But he is had necessary assist alongside the best way, from elements of the artwork world and a media that appears decided to disregard the inconvenient details — not least that we have now identified precisely who he’s for a decade and a half.

However who cares about proof when there’s cash to be made — and a lot of it?

We first began assembling the Banksy jigsaw when {a photograph} of a person with a spray-can appeared out of the blue and with out rationalization on the web.

Claiming to indicate him at work in Jamaica, it had been taken by a identified affiliate of the artist. We have been intrigued.

This was 2008 and Banksy had already made his identify spraying humorously anti-Institution artwork on partitions throughout Britain and elsewhere.

Eager to counsel a political ‘edge’, he’d received world plaudits for work on the wall dividing Israel and the West Financial institution, together with non-trademark photographs equivalent to Rage, The Flower Thrower — that includes a masked man hurling a bouquet — and Flying Balloon Woman. 

In 2006, Banksy left an ­inflatable doll dressed as a ­Guantanamo prisoner in ­Disneyland, California.

One other time, he hung a model of the Mona Lisa — however with a smiley face — within the Louvre, seeming to enjoy a sport of cat-and-mouse with Press and public.

It rapidly emerged, nevertheless, that Banksy had an sudden benefit when it got here to preserving his anonymity.

As a result of he’d adopted his alter ego on the early age of 14, fiction had already merged with reality, and we discovered that most individuals who knew him from more moderen instances had no clue about his actual identification. He was simply ‘Banksy’.

The breakthrough got here when somebody from the Bristol artwork scene lastly gave us a reputation: Robin Gunningham. 

Armed with this, we discovered the general public information displaying that Gunningham’s father, Peter, had been a contracts supervisor and that his mom, Pamela, had been an organization director’s secretary who later labored in a nursing dwelling.

The couple had married on April 25, 1970, at Kingswood Wesley Methodist Church, and moved right into a semi-detached home within the Bristol suburbs.

They’d two kids, Sarah, in 1972, and Robin, in 1973.

Subsequent, we tracked down a former neighbour, the late Anthony Hallett, who confirmed to us that the determine within the {photograph} from Jamaica was certainly Robin Gunningham. ‘I believe Robin was working as a graffiti artist,’ he instructed The Mail on Sunday.

‘He labored for different folks and would disappear for months on finish.

‘He was fairly nomadic. I’d not go so far as to say he went off the rails, however there was some form of rift within the household. He simply disappeared after he left dwelling.’ Once we approached Gunningham’s dad and mom for affirmation, nevertheless, their response was disconcerting. 

‘I can not assist you to actually,’ mentioned Peter Gunningham, who claimed to not recognise the person within the unique image and refused to assist us with the whereabouts of Robin.

There was not one of the shock you would possibly count on from a father confronted with an outlandish declare about his son.

His spouse, in the meantime, acknowledged that, bewilderingly, she was not Pamela Ann Gunningham and that she did not have a son referred to as Robin.

We traced Gunningham’s fellow pupils on the £9,240-a-year Bristol Cathedral Faculty.

Some is likely to be shocked to think about Banksy the iconoclast, wandering the Seventeenth-century former monastery with its higher and decrease quadrangles or on his knees for morning prayers within the gloom of the traditional cathedral.

Scott Nurse, an insurance coverage ­dealer from Robin’s class, mentioned: ‘He was considered one of three folks in my 12 months who have been extraordinarily gifted at artwork.

‘He did numerous illustrations. I’m not in any respect shocked if he’s Banksy.’ The coincidences mounted.

We discovered a faculty {photograph} of a bespectacled Gunningham from 1989 which reveals a discernible resemblance to the person within the Jamaica {photograph}. 

Repeatedly we discovered that his actions shadowed these of Banksy and vice versa. In 1988, for instance, Gunningham was residing in Easton space of Bristol with a person referred to as Luke Egan.

Egan was a good friend of Banksy who had collaborated with the artist on the Santa’s Ghetto exhibition in London’s West Finish in Christmas 2001.

At first, Egan denied figuring out both Banksy or Gunningham — though he had exhibited with the previous and was proven as having lived with the latter on the electoral roll.

He finally admitted figuring out Gunningham however not Banksy.

The identical Easton property was later purchased by Camilla Stacey, a curator at Bristol’s Right here Gallery.

Once we spoke to her, she was utterly sure that Banksy and Gunningham have been one and the identical. 

She discovered Banksy art work had been left behind in the home — but, for some time, she continued to obtain submit within the identify of Robin Gunningham.

‘After I moved in, the place had been coated in graffiti and stuff like that,’ she defined. ‘I threw issues within the bin. At that time Banksy was simply one other artist who had graffitied round Bristol.

‘It retains me awake at night time typically fascinated with it.’

When, on the flip of the Millennium, Banksy moved to London, so did Robin Gunningham, who took up residence in a flat in Kingsland Street, Hackney. 

Gunningham’s flatmate was a person referred to as Jamie Eastman who labored for Bristol’s Hombre information, a label for which Banksy designed various album covers.

In 2016, scientists at London’s Queen Mary College employed ‘geographic profiling’ — usually used to catch criminals or monitor the unfold of illness — to say that Gunningham was ‘the one critical suspect’.

They plotted the places of 192 of Banksy’s presumed artworks and located ‘scorching spots’ which correlated to a pub, taking part in fields and houses carefully linked to Gunningham, his family and friends.

Then, that very same 12 months, Banksy’s then agent, Steve Lazarides, launched a sequence of early ­images of the artist, which bore a rare similarity to Gunningham. 

Lazarides had been an image editor when he found Banksy on a 2001 photoshoot in Bristol.

In 2017, we found a photograph of the artist carrying a high-vis jacket at work on a bit that includes a large white rat daubed on Liverpool’s derelict White Horse pub in 2004.

The photographer, Christopher Wilson, mentioned: ‘There isn’t any approach that anyone can ignore the proof now.’

He was improper, in fact.

The 12 months 2018 introduced one other curious overlap. Two artworks — cassette sleeves on albums by Bristol band Mom Samosa and signed by Gunningham — appeared on an web public sale website with an estimate of £4,000. 

The albums had been recorded at studios in Bristol by sound engineer Martin Smith.

‘I keep in mind him [Gunningham] going out on a bicycle with a basket on the entrance with stencils in it,’ mentioned Smith.

‘He mentioned to me, ‘I will change my identify to Robin Banks. ‘What do you suppose?’

Then there was the graffiti at Gunningham’s childhood dwelling.

Though the revelation got here too late for The Mail on Sunday, we spoke to the household that moved in after Peter and Pamela Gunningham separated and bought up.

‘We purchased the home from the Gunninghams and had this graffiti within the storage,’ they instructed us.

‘But it surely was solely after shopping for The Mail on Sunday that we thought: ‘My God.’ We went again out to the storage and located a signature on the wall saying ‘Banksy Artwork’.’

Within the 16 years since we first named him, neither Gunningham nor his spouse have as soon as come ahead to say that we’re improper.

His alter-ego Banksy has didn’t deny the story, both, merely saying: ‘I am unable to touch upon who might or might not be Banksy however anybody described pretty much as good at drawing does not sound like Banksy to me.’

If the details are so clear and ­­effectively established, why the unusual omerta? Why, all these years later do folks insist on claiming there’s any doubt in any respect that Banksy and Robin Gunningham are the identical?

Easy, says Michel Boersma, curator of exhibition The Artwork of Banksy, in London’s Regent Road. ‘The artwork world maintains the conspiracy as a result of it’s a gravy practice.

‘The general public don’t need the thriller to cease as a result of it is a pretty fairytale.

‘The artwork world does not need his identification to be identified as a result of it could take away from the mystique — and mystique makes cash.

‘ There’s an opportunity they will quickly be dissatisfied, nevertheless.

Nonetheless determinedly the publicists have turned their face towards the proof, the courts might be more durable to disregard.

Banksy has discovered himself preventing a £1.3million authorized battle over the commercialisation of his art work — and he’s, on the face of it, a key witness.

When, in 2022, the Guess style model featured a picture of his Flower Bomber on its garments, Banksy lashed out on Twitter, now X, urging ‘all shoplifters’ to go to an outlet on Regent Road.

‘They’ve helped themselves to my art work with out asking,’ he wrote. ‘How can or not it’s improper so that you can do the identical to their garments?’ Now artwork licensing firm, Full Color Black, which equipped Guess with the picture, is suing Banksy for libel and damages within the Excessive Courtroom.

They are saying there was a respectable settlement in place. He denies it.

We are going to see. A listening to has but to be scheduled.

Might Banksy’s anonymity actually survive such a high-profile case? Would he, God forbid, seem in individual to offer proof?

Or maybe Robin Gunningham will merely make this awkward matter disappear.

A quiet settlement behind closed doorways to the satisfaction of all? From what we have seen these previous 16 years, we would not guess towards it.