Jane Preston, producer and director of Graffiti Wars, said: ‘Banksy’s an interesting character and after having met Blek le Rat and seen the similarity between their work, I really wanted to ask him about it, but unfortunately he declined.’īlek le Rat is successful but has not enjoyed Banksy’s mainstream popularity. He refused to comment on Blek le Rat’s comments in the documentary. He attended one of the best private schools in France.īanksy does not give interviews but in his unofficial biography he says of Blek le Rat: ‘Every time I think I’ve painted something original I find out that Blek le Rat has done it as well, only 20 years earlier.’ His father was an architect and his mother the daughter of a French consul in Thailand.

It was always thought that he was a talented tearaway from an underprivileged background on an inner-city estate.īut three years ago, The Mail on Sunday unmasked him as Robin Gunningham, a former public schoolboy who grew up in a middle-class suburb of Bristol.īanksy was still at primary school when Prou's works began appearing on the backstreets of the French capitalīlek le Rat was similarly privileged, growing up in an ‘haute bourgeois’ district of Paris. ‘It’s true that some people say Banksy is a p***k and a lot of young people consider Banksy like a God.’īanksy’s success was built partly on his anonymity and the myths that built up around him. Maybe he has to show his face now and show what kind of guy he is. It’s difficult to find a technique and style in art so when you have a style and you see someone else is taking it and reproducing it, you don’t like that. ‘When you’re an artist you use your own techniques. ‘When I see Banksy making a man with a child or Banksy making rats, of course I see immediately where he takes the idea. Angry: Xavier Prou, aka Blek le Rat has always refused to comment on the likeness of his own work - but he finally speaks out in a Channel 4 documentary

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