A man who has long been accused of being Banksy has furiously set the record straight after the latest news on the graffiti artist dropped.
Although the likes of Daft Punk and Sia have found fame in the world of music by keeping their faces hidden, Banksy has somehow managed to keep his identity hidden for nearly 30 years, despite now being one of the best known artists on the planet.
Since first emerging in Bristol in the 90s, Banksy has gone on to share his art all over the world, selling works to the likes of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, while also pulling off some pretty famous stunts, whether it be shredding a painting immediately after it was bought or recently leaving graffiti art on the side of a court building.
Naturally, whenever there is any sort of mystery involved in life, there will always be people who go out of their way to solve it, despite it undoubtedly taking away some of the magic.
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Recent investigations by Reuters have seemingly confirmed what many have suspected for years now, that Banksy's real name is Robin Gunningham.
But there have been plenty of mistaken identities over the years as people try and work out who the man behind the mask is, with some suggesting that it was Robert Del Naja, a member of the Massive Attack band, a British trip-hop group formed in Bristol, while others even joked that it could be Art Attack's Neil Buchanan.
Another man linked with the artist is George Georgiou, with the Londoner simply making the mistake of being in the wrong place at the wrong time after he was spotted near a Banksy mural near Finsbury Park back in 2024.
There's also certainly a likeness with him and one of the first known picture of Banksy, which shows the artist in Jamaica in the late 2000s, but now he's made it clear that he wants people to stop sharing the photos of him.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, the 69-year-old said: "I'm not Banksy... It's really annoying, it's ridiculous and it's disturbing. The first day, it was a laugh. It's a bit of an old joke now."
He was only next to the mural because it was painted on the building owned by his sons, with the Islington-based father suggesting that he dislikes painting and instead focuses on his role as a semi-retired builder.
Headded: "When it first happened, there was less reaction than there is now.
"It ain't really anything that I'm worried about. It's just really annoying because I'm still working. It's just disrupting my day endlessly.
"It's just the day-to-day, every five minutes you pick up the bloody phone and it's just someone having a giggle.
"That's all it is. It's all harmless stuff, but when you're trying to get on with your life, it's just really annoying. It's just a pain in the butt."
The only benefit really for Mr Georgiou is that people are suggesting he looks far younger than he actually is, but he did suggest that he was actually Banksy, because then 'no one would know who the f*** I am'.
Topics: Banksy
James Moorhouse