Across london, to dismaland, we explore the art, the man and the tactics. He is the picasso of the 21st century. He's prolific, he's profound. This is banksy: the mystery. A quiet monday morning in london in the summer of 2024, and there it appeared — a stencilled mountain goat precariously perched on a ledge in richmond, west london. In quick succession, more artworks appeared. Monkeys hanging from a railway bridge. Two elephants lovingly reaching for each other�*s long trunks from opposite windows. Again, banksy had managed to get all of us talking and wondering what this new animal trail across london was all about. What's the message behind these new pieces? i own the canvas of this. This isjust a poster from when it was in the museum, in moco in amsterdam. Well, john brandler knows a thing or two about banksy. Oh, i think the animal trail is very clever. The police booth in london looking like a fish tank — phenomenal, brilliant. What's scary about that is this is part of what is supposed to be the ring of steel protecting the city of london, and somebody can go into it and paint in it? brandler�*s collection of banksy artworks varies from world—famous motifs to lesser known, more provocative works. The one i really love is the gorilla lifting the shutter and letting the animals out, but they are all about what humans have done to the planet. We're killing everything off. We've overfished the seas, we've polluted the air. We're. . . The whole of the human race is like the goats on a tiny pinnacle. I thought the rhinoceros that was caught in flagrante in charlton, trying to sort of mount a nissan micra, i thought that was an absolutely beautiful piece because the message was this rhino, he's near extinction and he hasn't got a mate, and this is the closest thing that we've left him with. After nine days of animal artworks popping up across london, the series ended with a gorilla on the shutters of london zoo. Free the birds. . . And seals. But, as with all banksys, they might not stay untouched or where he intended. The rhino was quickly vandalised and london zoo have moved theirs for safekeeping. I think those london pieces, in some ways, are old—school banksy in that he has. . . . . Found very quirky, humorous, but also, you know, there's a message behind them. From his most recent series in london, to bristol, where it all began for banksy. My name is marc leverton. I am the author of a book called banksy myths and legends, which is a collection of kind of stories from around bristol, initially, relating to banksy. I found everybody had a story about banksy, initially, which i found amazing, that one person can be kind of, touch so many people's lives. The first banksy wall mural appeared in bristol in 1999, called mild, mild west. He'd been active in the city's graffiti scene, but not everyone was a fan. The initial perception of banksy was that he was a vandal, spray painting kind of willy nilly all over the city. He was very, very prolific. This was one of the things that really stood him out and made him kind of noticed by the local council. And he built a strong fan base in bristol. Yeah, i mean, i think it adds to, like, the art culture. And obviously he's from bristol, he's, like, part of the culture here. Who do you think banksy is? i have no idea but his. Artwork is amazing so. . . There are a couple of key moments in the banksy story that kind of show that transition from being a vandal who does graffiti to something that you'd now call street art. One was the well hung lover piece. He found the wall opposite the council, who were on his trail, trying to kind of scrub out all the work he was doing all over the city. He got some scaffolding put up and, at his leisure, under cover, he drew this wonderful picture of a naked man dangling outside a bedroom. Inside the bedroom you can see a lady, not very many clothes, and her very angry husband, looking for the well hung love r. That was a moment when the council were under real pressure to remove the work, but then did an online campaign to see what bristolians thought, whether the work should stay or go, and 96% voted in favour of keeping that piece. It's thought banksy then moved to east london in the early noughties, and artwork started appearing there too. I used to walk around and see little rats and little stencils that were everywhere, in east london, particularly, west end, down on the south bank, all over the place, really, and i began to think, is thisjust one person doing this? because he's the hardest working man in street art, if so. I thought, this guy understands messaging and understands marketing, and he's doing something that's really fun and subversive and countercultural, because he's drawing on walls he shouldn't be drawing on. In 2002, banksy created one of his most famous pieces, the girl with the balloon. 0riginally stencilled on to a bridge in london, he later painted it on canvas and released it. The one that i see the most is the one with the little girl with the balloon that she loses. I like that one. The youth throwing a bunch of flowers. It's quite an old one, yeah. Looks like a rioter, but he's got a posy of flowers in his hand and he'sjust about to throw them. They try to provoke discussion and debate. I was aware of the one in glastonbury with the boat. That was very interesting. But also i think the onesl in london at the moment are trying to lighten the mood a little bit so i think, yeah, he's trying to give back a bit to the. . . . . To the people. I could be banksy. Breaking news! oh, god, don't claim it! i think everybody enjoys being part of the banksy kind of game, if you like. I think this is one of the interesting things about the sort of banksy phenomenon is the fact that everybody feels like they're part of the kind of like experience. It's notjust a kind of a passive consumer—artist kind of relationship, you know, you're actually involved. People rush out to see the work before it gets graffitied, before it gets taken down, before it gets cut out and sold. Banksy is where he is in the world today because he does pictures that you don't need words to understand. A child with a balloon will appeal to somebody in peru, or perth, australia, or peterborough. Seasons greetings — the boy standing in the snow and he's not in the snow, he's actually from the pollution that's coming around the corner. And banksy's message doesn't need wording, so it doesn't matter if you're in france or germany or italy or peru or china — you can understand his picture, you can understand his message instantly. The imagery becomes so powerful and popular that banksy starts producing limited prints of his works as early as 2002 — the birth of banksy as a global mass market phenomenon. Everyone was now able to own a piece. And then he does this amazing exhibition in la. This exhibition was absolutely besieged. It was only on for a few days. It was besieged by loads of hollywood stars. Suddenly, brad pitt and others want to hang banksy artworks in their hollywood mansions. All of this only fuelled the fire that was the speculation around who banksy actually is. I think before my contact with him, i always found him very intriguing. . . . . And quite difficult to work out. Many names have been thrown around during the years. I don't think banksy will be unmasked because i think there have been so many attempts to try that already and every time somebody points at a photo and says, this is banksy, there's another story that pops up saying, this is also banksy. There's lots of people who, you know, either want to be banksy or have had a kind of finger pointed at them. Neil buchanan from art attack. Then it was robert del naja from massive attack. Jamie hewlett from gorillaz — he was potentially banksy. Neil buchanan from art attack. There's a guy called robin gunningham who did some work in bristol once upon a time. It is that spartacus thing. Every time somebody sort of says, this is banksy, somebody else is also sort of thrown into the mix, and that will probably forever happen. There's any number of people who, you know, may or may not be banksy. There's also the idea that banksy is not a person, it's an idea or a team. Banksy and his team never denied or confirmed any of these names. In fact, the only official mouthpiece is his instagram account. If a picture of an artwork is uploaded here, it pretty much means it has the official stamp of authenticity and part of the banksy universe. He likes to control his market. He likes to control who has his art. Guess what? i'm not on his christmas card list. He likes to be a control freak, if you like. Now, i don't know whether that influences who he sells his art to and how much he sells his art for. I don't know how much money he is on today but in the past he was on some very, very serious numbers. I worked out, i guesstimated at one point he was on between a0 and 45 million a year. And team banksy actually go by a different, more incognito name. Pest control was an agency designed to keep the pests away — the people that were pestering banksy about his identity, the people who were trying to buy his work when there isn't very much of his work for sale. And so he surrounded himself, now he had a few quid, with very, very expensive and brilliant lawyers, very, very brilliant and presumably expensive hollywood agent types who were really used to managing and organising logistics and keeping people at bay. Pest control are crucial to banksy�*s business strategy — but more on that later — and some think they have the mystery about his identity all figured out. He's not a doctor on the side, he's a street artist. He got the inspiration for what he's doing or how he is doing it, i should say, from a man called blek le rat in paris. Blek got arrested, and numerous times, because if you think of the streets in paris, they're wide, they're straight, there are no trees, so blek came up with the idea of instead of spending every other week in prison, spending every other week cutting stencils in his studio, and then he could go onto any street in paris, have a look, see that there're no police around, four bits of blu—tack, put the stencil up, spray it and be gone in two minutes. He'd heard about blek in the past, but he was doing something in particular and he thought, this is a much better idea. People will want to know everything about everybody these days, which i think is part of the frustration for some people, but i think it would also ruin the mystique and ruin the. . . . . The surprise and the kind of. . . That myth that we have, and actually, i think it's more funjust to not know. With increasing fame and notoriety, exhibitions started popping up around the world showing banksy�*s work. The most comprehensive was in his home town, called banksy versus bristol museum, in 2009. Like everything, it was kept secret. We had to sign agreements that we wouldn't speak about the exhibition. That's one of the recipes for success for him, is to have it all kept under wraps. Banksy and his team were involved in curating the exhibition and making bespoke pieces for it. In a statement about the show, banksy said it was the first one where taxpayers�* money was being used to hang his artworks rather than scraping them off. I'm kate brindley and i was part of the team that worked with banksy on the 2009 banksy versus bristol museum. It was just a usual day in the office, when one of my colleagues came in to see me and said, we've had banksy�*s people on the phone and they want to bring a project to bristol museums, and i was. . . Well, i couldn't believe it, and so i questioned my colleague and i was like, surely somebody is having us on. It transpired it was true, and it grew and grew to what became banksy versus bristol museum. It was a bit of a love letter to his home city. Normally, when you work with an artist or. . . Or a partner to make an exhibition, of course it's all about advance publicity and getting interest. But with him, of course, it was all about it had to be kept quiet because it had to be something that was launched on the public at the very last minute, which is the way they work to build excitement and for it to be a surprise. Archive: all day, thousands have queued patiently to getj the first glimpse of the new banksy exhibition. And it was so popular, people came from all over and queued for hours. We had over 300,000 people and that was over a three—month period. Now, we might normally welcome 50,000 people, maybe a few more if it was a really popular exhibition, maybe 80,000. But 300,000? banksy has a kind of fearlessness, which i think probably comes from the early days of going out and painting a random location in the middle of the night. Maybe that disrespect for the kind of normal laws of art and the normal bounds of what you can and can't do has probably enabled him to then kind of think, well, anything is possible. Then came dismaland, created in weston—super—mare in 2015, a kind of anti—disneyland. Banksy described it as a family theme park unsuitable for children. It was a temporary art project where he collaborated with other artists to create the dystopian theme park. . . . . Including a game where you could drive your own boat filled with migrants, and a photo opportunity where a killer whale leapt out of a toilet. Other artists who visited reckon the park reflected some of the pressing political problems of the time. He continues to surprise, he continues to do amazing events and opportunities, and, whether that's the weston—super—mare dismaland through to, you know, the recent interventions in london, i think he continues to grab the attention of the art world, and the public. Though, as banksy�*s career, wealth and status have grown, some have questioned the very issues he rooted himself in. A friend of mine described him as a champagne socialist. His views are very much socialist, but he is earning tens of million pounds a year, which gives him the financial freedom to indulge his social ideals. Banksy�*s political artworks go beyond the uk. This is the walled 0ff hotel in bethlehem, which he designed with other creatives. Opposite the israeli west bank barrier, it's billed as having the worst view of any hotel in the world. Due to the israel—gaza conflict, it's currently not taking any reservations. He definitely has a conscience in his work in that he's drawing attention to social issues and situations both home and abroad that he, you know, wants to bring to our attention. Archive: it's become | one of the most famous and notorious incidents. And banksy�*s stunts have only got bigger and better, like in 2018, when famous auctioneers sotheby�*s came to sell a rather expensive painting of his. And it shredded. Oh, what a surprise. Well, it was at the end of the sale, it should have been in the middle, normally. In my opinion, sotheby�*s must have known what was going on, because you don't allow a box with mechanics in it to be plugged into your wall. . . And it was worth £1 million each, then one went to auction and it fetched 18 million. So then, his collection of them has gone from being worth 5 million to 100 million. That's very clever marketing. By doing the street work where he, you know, makes a big statement and gets everybody talking, gets the press coverage, that kind of enhances the brand, which means that the work will then sell for more money. Whether banksy always is the beneficiary of that is not something that i think is widely known. I think people buy work from banksy, maybe secretly, but a lot of the work that we see that gets the big pound signs, big dollar signs on the auction market is in the secondary market, so that's somebody who's already bought the piece and is reselling it again for a greater value. So does banksy profit from that? banksy's. . . He profits from the story, but maybe not from the money. Him and his team were very, very clear about their commercial aspiration and what they controlled, and that, i assume, is how they make their money. They were also very generous with us in terms of they financed much of the work, and they gifted us an artwork, did a lot of support with the pr and otherfacilitation of the exhibition, so it was a very clear business deal and transaction, but it was also an understanding of the context that they were operating in. Just because banksy has become a household name, it doesn't mean the writing isn't on the walls when it comes to vandalism or authorities wanting to wade in. I've bought a number of pieces of street art, of walls, five of them, in fact, right? the most famous one, obviously, is seasons greetings in wales, where, within a couple of hours of it being recognised as a banksy, four very large gentleman turned up with sledgehammers to destroy it, and, within half an hour of them being turned away, somebody else turned up with a large, you know, huge pot of black paint they were trying to pour over it, but the locals stopped that happening. But others are happy to welcome him to their neighbourhood with open arms. In kew! can you believe it? no. Thank you, banksy. We appreciate it. He's rewritten the rule book for contemporary artists by saying to the artists, you've got to become famous and then people will buy your work. He has made a criminal act, which is vandalism, into something socially acceptable. He continues to endure because he reinvents himself, and in a way which does grasp the public interest, and his anonymity has to be part of that. But can banksy�*s legend and legacy continue to endure? it's the mysticism. I mean, everybody knows magicians aren't actually doing magic — they're tricking you. It's sleight of hand, they're using a mirror, they're using distraction techniques — it's not magic, it's trickery. That's what banksy does with art. Everyone loves a mystery, right? it's super exciting to think that there's this guy wandering around, he could pass you in the street, wearing a high—visjacket, you wouldn't look at him twice, and he's this mystery guy. That's cool. That's always going to be cool. So let's leave him alone. Let's leave him alone to do his thing anonymously because whenever he does something, it's usually pretty brilliant. It's very difficult to think about an artist who has quite the wide appeal and global coverage of an artist like banksy. He continues to gain that sort of public interest and imagination in a way that it's actually quite difficult to think of anyone else who does that. Some people say, oh, banksy's past his prime. He's been doing it too long. It's no longer a fresh and interesting. Well, that'sjust not right. I mean, the guy is producing more good work in the average year than most artists do in, you know, a decade. He's prolific, he's profound — the london stuff that we've just seen tells us that. I think he'll be around for a long time yet. I really hope so, anyway. Hello there. It's been a cool and misty start to the weekend along the east coast of scotland and that haar is moving inland through the central belt. Other parts of scotland and northern ireland enjoyed a lot of sunshine again on saturday and temperatures into the mid 20s for england and wales. The weather is changing. This area of low pressure, moving up slowly from the south, brings the threat of some rain which could be heavy and thundery for a while, and we've got this wetter weather developing in the midlands, heading northwards into northern england. Some further rain in wales and the southwest, the midlands and eastern england. Maybe brightening up with some sunshine that could trigger one or two thundery showers, mind you. Some rain coming into the southeast of scotland and there will be more cloud for scotland and northern ireland, so temperatures aren't going to be as high. A noticeable change in that northerly wind for northern ireland. Much cooler here where we get some sunshine in england. Temperatures not too bad for the time of year. That area of low pressure bringing the threat of some rain, then starts to move away overnight and into monday. We're left with a lot of cloud to begin the day for eastern parts of england, a little rain in that that's retreating towards the southeast. Other areas seeing some sunshine for a while before we've got some cloud and patchy rain into the far north of northern ireland and western scotland later on in the day but it's a cooler, fresher air. It's not going to feel as humid and temperatures are going to be lower across the board to start the week and, if anything, the winds are going to strengthen. It will feel cooler still as we move into tuesday. This deeper area of low pressurejust running to the north of scotland, bringing some wet weather into here through much of the day, and a weather front will sweep down across england and wales on tuesday. Short spell of rain here, followed by some sunshine and some showers up towards the northwest but the winds are going to be stronger on tuesday. The strongest winds will be in scotland in the north and northeast of the country. The winds could be gusting 50, maybe even 60 miles an hour. That, of course, will add to this cooler, fresher feel. So, temperatures are ranging from 13 to 18 degrees. And that northwesterly wind, once it arrives, is going to be with us really through much of the week ahead, bringing with it an autumn chill, maybe even a bit of snow over the top of the scottish mountains. Huge change from the mid 20s that we've seen in scotland and northern ireland, and that colder air moves its way further south across england and wales. Live from washington, this is bbc news. Police in kentucky say several people have been shot on a highway in laurel county. Protests across france over the appointment of michel barnier as the new prime minister. Huge rallies in cities across israel as demands grow for a deal to release hostages in gaza. Hello. We're continuing to follow breaking news out of the us state of kentucky where officials have now re—opened a section of i75 highway near london, where a shooting took place on saturday night. The laurel county sherriff�*s office has identified a person of interest in connection with a shooting, and he remains at—large. Authorities consider joseph a couch to be armed and dangerous and have urged members of the public not to approach him. These are the latest pictures from the ground — a heavy law enforcement presence at the scene. In the past hour, london county mayor randall weddle released an update on facebook, urging caution.