I don’t claim to know who Banksy is. Maybe he really is Robin Gunningham from Bristol; or maybe London’s Mail on Sunday, the newspaper that claimed on Saturday to have possibly identified the elusive guerilla graffitist, is the victim of a hoax.
All I know is that when I Googled the name of the Bristol bloke, I went straight to the high-numbered (less clicked-upon) pages and instantly came up with this—a death notice from July 24, 2004 for one Robin Gunningham of Bristol, who died at age 44. (The Thomas Davis Funeral Home, cited in the notice, is located in Bristol.) The notice says that his mother’s name was Pauline. This could explain why “Banksy’s” purported mother, Pamela, maintained to the BBC that “she had never even had a son.” Banksy has long been believed to hail from Bristol.
I’m no private investigator, and I’ll let others sort all this out. All I know is that the photo in the Mail article of the black-haired guy spotted with a paint pot in Jamaica looks nothing like the Mail’s other photo of Gunningham as a red-haired schoolboy. (Yes, I HAVE heard of hair dye and perhaps “Robin Gunningham” is a popular name among Bristolians.)
Why don’t we just let this prankster stay anonymous? It’s lots more fun.