AP Photo/Reed Saxon
A long-kept secret by iconic street artist Banksy was actually revealed 20 years ago. BBC Radio shared a lost interview with Banksy from 2003 in which he revealed his his name.
Banksy and his famously mysterious street art have intrigued the globe for decades, inspiring documentaries and a podcast series on BBC Radio 4’s, The Banksy Story. Former BBC arts correspondent Nigel Wrench was a listener of that podcast and remembered his own interview with Banksy in the summer of 2003, which was done for the BBC but only partially used. The artist, who was in his 20s and promoting his art show “Turf War,” had granted the rare interview with Wrench, who asked him if his name was “Robert Banks,” to which he responded: “It’s Robbie.”
Banksy also gave some insight into his approach to his street art, created under the dark of night in public places, a method that some have called vandalism. But Banksy defended it in the interview with Wrench:
I’m not here to apologise for it. It’s a quicker way of making your point, right? In the same way my mother used to cook Sunday roast every Sunday and says every Sunday, “it takes hours to make it, minutes to eat.” And these days she eats microwave meals for one and seems a lot happier. I’m kind of taking that approach to art really. I want to get it done and dusted.
Wrench, after learning about The Banksy Story, found the recordings from his original interview with Banksy and provided them to BBC’s Radio 4. A bonus episode of the podcast, entitled “The Lost Banksy Interview,” features this long-lost conversation and can be heard now.
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