Banksy Crazy Beat

Almost destroyed by stupid, stupid, STUPID Hackney Council. The royal family are still there but most of the border has gone. It's on private property but because the council hadn't had a reply to their letters, and they "have a policy..." or something, they just turned up with the rollers.

Blundering, ignorant, jobs-worth cretins who should stick to clearing up dog do and bending over for big developers.

Another brilliant Bansky original! =D

A pretty much untouched Banksy: no careful painting around it, no Perspex covering it. Someone has graffitied across the bottom, but I don’t think it’s done too much damage.

It shows a spoof version of the royal family, and is quite unusual for a Banksy. For one thing it uses a lot more colours: he usual restricts himself to red, black and white. I also can’t think of another example where he’s used cartoonish characters like in this one (aside from the odd teddy of course). It was used as record cover art for Blur’s Crazy Beat single, and though I did look up the lyrics, I didn’t find any royal references there!

While taking a picture I was approached by a guy sitting outside a building nearby. Apparently I was the fourth person that day he’d seen taking pictures and he was curious! I don’t think I enlightened him any though. He seemed to have got the idea from someone else that it had been painted by an organisation called Banksy rather than one person, and he was sticking to the idea.