▶ Banksy filmed live by The Sunday Times – YouTube.

Here are some extracts from his interview:

“I still paint graffiti because I genuinely think the side of a canal is a more interesting place to have art than a museum. And the fact of the matter is, if you exhibit in a gallery you have to compete against Rembrandt, but if you paint down an alley you only have to compete against a dustbin. I guess it’s the art equivalent of hanging around with fat people to make yourself look thin.”

“I did art at school but I never pursued it any further. I have a large collection of famous art at home, but they’re all fakes. I make them myself. If I like a picture I grab a photo, project it up and paint it. Sometimes I change the colours to fit with the curtains. I do it partly because I’m tight and partly because if the Basquiats and Picassos in the sitting room were real I’d be too scared to ever leave the house.

“I recommend graffiti to anyone, for no other reason than a trip across town is never boring — you’re always on the lookout for new spots and what you can do on them. Likewise, if you ever get bored going round a museum, the interest level ramps up substantially when you smuggle in your own piece under a coat and glue it up somewhere.”

“I don’t make as much money as people think. The commercial galleries that have held exhibitions of my paintings are nothing to do with me. And I certainly don’t see money from the T-shirts, mugs and greeting cards. My lawyer calls me ‘the most infringed artist alive’ and wants me to do something about it. But if you’ve built a reputation on having a casual attitude towards property ownership, it seems a bit bad-mannered to kick off about copyright law.”