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Who is Banksy? It is one of the art world’s, perhaps even pop culture’s, most enduring mysteries since the street artist burst onto the scene in the early 2000s. But we may be one step closer to the artist’s true identity following the recent discovery of a lost BBC interview in which Banksy appears to confirm his name.
The BBC reported on Monday that it had unearthed a 2003 interview between the young up-and-coming street artist Banksy and the former BBC arts correspondent Nigel Wrench. The original recording was edited for a spot on BBC radio which was then used as part of the BBC podcast series The Banksy Story which was released in July. But Wrench, having listened to the podcast series, was inspired to revisit the full original recording and discovered a lot more buried information about the artist that was never used.
In the discovered audio, Wrench speaks to Banksy, who was in his 20s at the time, ahead of the artist’s Turf War show in East London in the summer of 2003. Banksy is asked by Wrench if his name is “Robert Banks”, and the artist replies, “It’s Robbie.”
The identity of Banksy has long intrigued the art world, and in particular, the feverish tabloid press in the U.K. Over the last two decades, various people have been identified as Banksy, most notably Robert Del Naja, also known as 3D and a co-founder of the hugely influential trip-hop act Massive Attack. The supposed evidence that Del Naja was Banksy included that they were both from the Bristol area, and the musician also dabbled in graffiti at a young age.
In 2008, The Daily Mail claimed that a Bristol-based man named Robin Gunningham was Banksy. The newspaper spoke to Gunningham’s school friends and peers to corroborate the story. A 2021 story in The Sunday Times reported that Gunningham had at some point began using the alias Robin Banks, which later became the nickname Banksy.
