Two Banksy stories have appeared this weekend in a press suffering from either a severe news shortage or a chronic space surplus.  Although writing about street art is ideally never encumbered by this author’s first person singular perspective, both today’s Banksy stories have a minor and trivial personal resonance.

Jamie Oliver the former boy wonder chef confesses to having thrown away Banksy art given to him as a gift.  Seems that Jamie didn’t think the art would ever be worth anything and didn’t want it hanging on his wall.  Our Shoreditch Street Art Tours actually have their origins in a process that involved Banksy’s connection to Jamie Oliver.

Jamie Oliver the brilliant young chef was a breath of fresh air in the world of TV chefs with his cockney accent presenting shows in a style that bucked the established studio style, catering for mates in his home complete with beer and swearing in some mid terrace house in grungy East London.

Jamie Oliver opened a restaurant in Shoreditch called Fifteen, its laudable and substantially successful objective was to provide training and a springboard to a new career as chefs for young local unemployed and disadvantaged youths let down by conventional education and apprenticeship schemes.  This became the subject of Jamie Oliver’s hit 2002 Channel 4 TV programme “Jamie’s Kitchen”.  Supposedly with encouragement from his celebrity mate, Banksy stencilled some mischievous rats breaking in next door to the restaurant, perhaps as a metaphor for the lucky beneficiaries breaking into an otherwise unobtainable career.

Jamie and Banksy were a great match, two peas in a pot (sic). Both were young disrupters, both hugely influential, well meaning and cool.  Jamie’s  suggestion that he had no idea Banksy would be worth anything feels perhaps a bit disingenuous given their rumoured connection while framing the timing as being a part of mid to late 90s “Cool Britiannia” is not entirely consistent with Banksy’s first exhibition in Bristol and his relocation to London both occurring in 2000 and the 2002 opening of Fifteen.

The completely tenuous stretch is that I saw these rats on one of the famous Banksy tours led by Martin Bull aka Shellshock back in 2006. The photos of those rats were taken on that infamous tour.

Martin and his co-researcher Sam remain very close friends, here is the story of how my very first street art tour in 2008 was inspired by those Shellshock Banksy Tours.

Sadly, those rats disappeared long ago. Not the first Banksy Street art to be lost in Shoreditch, check the recent story of Transport for London Overground and their wildly inconsistent removal of the 2024 Banksy monkeys.

To avoid disrupting their hazy alcoholic Holiday Season schedules, journalists compile year end best of lists around November time.  If the clickbait potential can be ramped up by throwing Banksy in the mix, all the better.   This morning a “best 7 photos of the year” article appeared and right up there was a photo of one of Banksy’s “Zoo escape” pieces accompanied by the “On the spot” commentary.

To recap, over 9 days last Summer Banksy did a new street art stencil somewhere in London.  Many people’s favourite was the amusing lovestruck rhino stencil on an industrial estate service road in Charlton.  Not only can we tell exactly when the photographer landed his snap but I must confess to a minor role in him landing his accolade.

The whole Banksy chasing circus (I blush here) was poised all morning for the daily Banksy Instagram upload.   Yet another cross London bike ride, this one was the furthest from me by a long way, brought me by mid afternoon to the rhino right outside some salvaged metal processing facility.  They had dropped a branded skip in front of the car, covered the wall next to the rhino in their logo and fastened the kind of sash worn in a previous era by beauty contest winners or pageant queens across the front windscreen.  Such shameless self promoting Banksy exploitation is deplorable.  More blushing.

Surprised that no one had taken the initiative, I removed the sash and some of the easier logos from the wall to pats on the back from several present.  Later that afternoon some local writers rolled up and tagged the wall.  The award winning Getty photographer’s snap was taken sometime between the two events.   “Timing is everything” when it comes to Banksy says photographer John Phillips and his certainly benefitted from my purge of the opportunistic advertising.  His photo even suffers from the same sun artefact as mine, see that slight green tinge in the middle right at the top.  Our photos were taken at very similar times.

In case you are wondering, have you ever tried shifting a skip on your own?

All Photos copyright Dave Stuart