Unmasking Banksy should have been an irresistible scoop for a BBC reporter.
But the corporation’s former New York correspondent has confessed that he caught the elusive artist on film nearly a decade ago, only for the footage to be buried.
Arriving at the scene of a newly completed Banksy mural in New York City in 2018, Nick Bryant caught its creator coming out of a nearby coffee shop with fresh paint still on his hands.
A BBC cameraman filmed the encounter as the panicked artist made his escape.
When Mr Bryant called his bosses in London to inform them that they had a world exclusive, they took advice from an unlikely source.
The BBC’s former New York correspondent Nick Bryant has revealed his close encounter with Banksy
“Minutes later, a phone call came through from London,” Bryant said. “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.”
The BBC’s arts editor and its head of news agreed, and the film never saw the light of day.
Mr Bryant said he was relieved, as he is a Bristolian and feared “hometown ignominy” if he revealed the artist’s true identity.
The Reuters news agency claimed in March to have proved that Banksy is Robin Gunningham, 51, who was born and raised in Bristol and educated at the fee-paying Bristol Cathedral School. He is said to have changed his name to David Jones to preserve his anonymity.
Banksy’s latest work was revealed in London last week – Andy Rain/Shutterstock Editorial
Besides one grainy picture, Banksy had never been clearly captured on film – until the BBC secured its scoop.
Bryant made his confession on Substack after Banksy unveiled his latest work in London last week – a statue of a man striding off a plinth as a billowing flag obscures his view.
“Like Banksy, I hail from Bristol in the West Country,” the reporter wrote. “His renegade international success has long been the source of immense hometown pride.”
When Banksy visited New York in 2013 to create a series of works on buildings around the city, Mr Bryant reported on it as a “labour of love”, and was told that the artist appreciated the coverage.
Remembering that he was a fan, Banksy’s public relations team contacted Mr Bryant in 2018 to tip him off that a new piece would be unveiled in New York City that day.
To give the BBC time to record a story for the Ten O’Clock News bulletin, the PRs even told the reporter its exact location: the Houston Bowery Wall, a spot where many artists showcase their work.
The reporter and cameraman arrived to find a giant mural, and a security guard on patrol. The guard said that the artist had told him to expect crowds.
“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,” Mr Bryant recalled.
He and the cameraman set off in hot pursuit, catching up with the man as he got into a battered people carrier, while his female assistant placed her coffee on the roof of the car as she opened the passenger door.
A still from the suppressed footage thought to show the artist’s begrimed hand – https://historyneverended.substack.com/p/my-brush-with-banksy/https://historyneverended.substack.com/p/my-brush-with-banksy
Mr Bryant said: “Seeing the cameraman, the artist panickily told his assistant to 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.”
But Mr Bryant said the footage posed an “institutional and personal dilemma” – should the BBC reveal his identity? And should he, as a fan and fellow Bristolian, be the one to do it?
“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,” Mr Bryant wrote.
In the end, BBC News management made the decision not to show it. “So we buried the footage. I missed out on what might have been a global scoop, but saved myself from hometown ignominy.”
The artwork itself did not make it on to the Ten O’Clock News bulletin: Mr Bryant had expected it to be a critique of Donald Trump, but it turned out to be a less attention-grabbing image of Zehra Doğan, a Kurdish artist jailed by the Turkish authorities.
Banksy’s team claimed to Mr Bryant that the man he had met was not the artist, but an assistant adding finishing touches.
The Banksy encounter was not the only scoop-that-could-have-been for Mr Bryant.
He revealed that, as a young reporter, he discovered a senior figure in the Labour Party was having an affair with his secretary. He did not publish it, only for the News of the World to splash it years later.