‘Daily Mail’ Claims They Have Revealed Banksy—He’s a Parking Attendant. Really?

Brian Boucher September 10, 2015 ShareShare This Article

The notorious street artist known as Banksy may be hiding in plain sight at his “bemusement park,” called Dismaland.

Eagle-eyed observers have discerned a similarity between the man featured in the photo above that purportedly shows the British maverick and a man working as a parking attendant at the ironic theme park in the English resort town of Weston-Super-Mare, according to a report in the Daily Mail.

In 2008, the Daily Mail released an image of Robin Gunningham, from Bristol, who Banksy fans suspect is the mystery artist. A single photograph supposedly showing him in sunglasses with tousled hair was taken in Jamaica in 2004.

Gunningham is 38. The parking attendant looks to our eye like a man about 10 years older than that, but there is a striking similarity to the men’s noses.

The two men are even wearing similar sunglasses.

(UPDATE: Womp womp! The Daily Mail has now revealed that the parking attendant in question is just that—a parking attendant for the local municipality, not, as we had all hoped, the elusive Banksy.)

The Banksy fan who spotted him told the Daily Mail, “While waiting for tickets at the front entrance, a Seafront management parking attendant walks by and I thought, ‘Blimey, does he looks like Banksy or what?’”

A staffer reportedly laughed and said, “Isn’t that just the type of thing Banksy would do?”

The fan then showed the picture to a Dismaland employee “who supposedly met Banksy once.” The employee conceded that there’s a resemblance between the two men, adding, “Banksy would do exactly this kind of thing.”