A scientific study of heat maps claims to have finally unmasked the mystery of street artist Banksy.
Researchers at Queen Mary University of London used a statistical technique of geographic profiling, which is more commonly used by police to catch criminals.
They claim to have tagged him by identifying an obvious pattern between the locations of his art and addresses he often visits in Bristol and London.
And their results seem to back up the Mail on Sunday's revelations in 2008 that Banksy is Robin Gunningham from Bristol.
In the frame: The man in this photograph, taken in Jamaica in 2004, is believed to be Banksy Read more
An early Banksy on a building in Bristol - near the the Stokes Croft area which is thought to have been the one time hangout of the notorious graffiti artist
The study was revealed today, despite Banksy's lawyers' attempts delay to the announcement.
Dr Steve Le Comber, of QMUL,told the BBC: 'I'd be surprised if it's not (Gunningham), even without our analysis, but it's interesting that the analysis offers additional support for it.
'You sort of default to the terminology from criminology, where you're talking about suspects and crime sites, but that doesn't imply any moral judgment - that these are actually crimes, or to be deplored, or whatever.
'That's even more important in disease biology, of course.'
Geo-profiling uses specific locations to find 'hot spots' of activity that could lead to a list of potential suspects.
QMUL's researchers used the method on 192 artworks in London (164) and Bristol (28).
Three addresses in London were identified: one in the Kingsland Road area, where Gunningham lived with Jamie Eastham in 2004 and 2005, and two for Gunningham’s girlfriend (now wife), Joy Millward, in the Great North Road area and in the Old Street area.
Suspect sites in Bristol included Gunningham’s house in the Easton area of the city, The Plough in Easton, for whom Gunningham played football), and their playing fields at Baptist Mills Primary School, as well as his old school - Bristol Cathedral School.
London: The lighter areas show regions which score highly in the geo-profile. The red dots are Banksy's artworks in the capital. In London, two of the three suspect sites – Gunningham’s wife’s flats in the Great North Road area and the Old Street area – fall within the top 10 per cent of the geo-profile
London: This graph emphasises the peak of artwork in the Old Street Area of London, close to Gunningham's wife's flats
Bristol: In Bristol, two of the four suspect sites - Gunningham’s Easton home and Baptist Mills Primary School playing fields - are found in the top 10 per cent of the geo-profile
Bristol: There is a peak in the Easton area of Bristol, where Banksy was living in the late 1990s with his friend Luke Egan
Graffiti artist Banksy's identity has been confirmed as public schoolboy Robin Gunningham in a scientific study - which his lawyers tried to block
Recurring motif: Another Mona Lisa in Glasgow which is believed to have been hung up by Banksy
In London, two of the three suspect sites – Gunningham’s wife’s flats in the Great North Road area and the Old Street area – fall within the top 10 per cent of the geo-profile
In Bristol, two of the four suspect sites - Gunningham’s Easton home and Baptist Mills Primary School playing fields - are found in the top 10 per cent of the geo-profile.
The study found a number of coincidences with Banksy's artwork and Gunningham. They are:
- Many of Banksy’s artworks can be found in, and he referred to Bristol in a 2006 interview in the magazine Swindle (Joseph 2008). His first exhibition took place in the city in 2000. Gunningham grew up in Bristol and attended Bristol Cathedral School. He lived in the Easton area in the late 1990s
- Two sites associated with Gunningham fall within the top 10 per cent of the heat maps. There is a peak in the Easton area of Bristol, where Banksy was living in the late 1990s with his friend Luke Egan
- Banksy moved to London around 2000, as did Gunningham
- In London the geo-profile covers an area of 400km2. The peak of Banksy's artworks is less than 500 metres from Gunningham's wife's former address and close to the house he lived in with his friend Jamie Eastman.
The study concludes: 'The spatial locations of Banksy artworks in both London and Bristol are associated with sites linked to one prominent candidate, Robin Gunningham.'
Since Banksy made his name with his trademark stencil-style 'guerrilla' art in public spaces - on walls in London, Brighton, Bristol and even on the West Bank barrier separating Israelis and Palestinians - his works have sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds.
He has dozens of celebrity collectors including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Christina Aguilera.
HOW THE MAIL ON SUNDAY NAMED BANKSY AS ROBIN GUNNINGHAM IN 2008
After a year-long investigation by Claudia Joseph, Simon Trump, Ewan Fletcher, Adam Luck, Jason Buckner and Craig Hibbert, the Mail on Sunday named Banksy as Robin Gunningham.
The search began with a photograph taken in Jamaica showing a man in a blue shirt and jeans, with a hint of a smile on his face and a spray can at his feet. Taken in 2004, it was said to show Banksy at work. When the picture was published it appeared to be the first chink in the armour of anonymity with which the artist has shielded himself ever since his work began to attract the attention of the art world.
Armed with this photograph, the team travelled to Bristol, long said to have been Banksy's home city, where they made contact with a man who claimed to have once met the artist in the flesh.
The search began with a photograph taken in Jamaica showing a man in a blue shirt and jeans, with a hint of a smile on his face and a spray can at his feet
Many people claimed as much, but the moment one started asking for more information, one discovered they actually 'know someone who met Banksy' - and the trail ran cold.
However, this man claimed not only to have met the elusive artist but was able to furnish us with a name - not the usual variations of the name Banks but one all the more intriguing.
The man in the photograph, he insisted, was formerly known as Robin Gunningham - and it didn't require much imagination to work out how such a name could result in the nickname Banksy.
From records available to the public, they were able to glean further information.
Robin's father, Peter Gordon Gunningham was from the Whitehall area of Bristol. His mother, Pamela Ann Dawkin-Jones was a company director's secretary and grew up in the exclusive surroundings of Clifton.
The couple married on April 25, 1970, at Kingswood Wesley Methodist Church. On February 8, 1972, their daughter Sarah was born at Bristol Maternity Hospital, by which time Peter had been promoted to area manager for a hotel company and the couple had bought their first home, a semidetached house in Bristol.
On July 28, 1973, Robin was born in the same hospital. According to neighbours, the boy had early surgery for a cleft palette.
Robin Gunningham pictured as a child at Bristol Cathedral School, aged, 15, in the summer of 1989
When Robin was nine, the family moved to a larger home in the same street and it is there he spent his formative years and became interested in graffiti.
A neighbour, Anthony Hallett, recalls the couple moving into the street as newlyweds and living there until 1998. They have since separated.
When they showed Mr Hallett the Jamaica photograph, he said the man in it was Robin Gunningham.
In 1984, Robin, then 11, donned a black blazer, grey trousers and striped tie to attend the renowned Bristol Cathedral School, which currently charges fees of £9,240 a year and lists supermodel Sophie Anderton as a former pupil.
It was hard to imagine Banksy, the anti-authoritarian renegade, as a public schoolboy wandering around the 17th Century former monastery, with its upper and lower quadrangles and its prayers in the ancient cathedral.
But they then found a school photograph, taken in 1989, of a bespectacled Robin Gunningham in which he shows a discernible resemblance to the man in the Jamaica photograph.
Pictured is the former family home of Robin Gunningham in Bristol. It's believed Gunningham is Banksy
Indeed, fellow pupils remember Robin, who was in Deans House, as being a particularly gifted artist.
In the rare interviews Banksy has given (always anonymously), the artist has acknowledged that it was while at school that he first became interested in graffiti.
Robin Gunningham left school at 16 after doing GCSEs and began dabbling in street art.
As the investigation continued, their inquiries demonstrated again and again that the details of Robin Gunningham's life story dovetail perfectly with the known facts about Banksy.
By 1998 Robin Gunningham was living in Easton, Bristol, with Luke Egan, who went on to exhibit with Banksy at Santa's Ghetto, an art store which launched at Christmas 2001 in London's West End.
Egan and Gunningham are believed to have left the house when the owner wanted to sell it.
Flower power: A double yellow line turns into a huge yellow flower - with artist 'self-portrait' - in London
Camilla Stacey, a curator at Bristol's Here Gallery who bought the property in 2000, said that Banksy and Robin Gunningham are one and the same person. She knew the house had been inhabited by Banksy because of the artwork left there - and she used to get post for him in the name of Robin Gunningham.
Once the group were almost certain Banksy was Gunningham - they went searching for him and tried to see if his parents would help.
His mother Pamela lived in a neat modern bungalow in a village outside Bristol. After identifying ourselves, they asked her if she had a son called Robin.
Her reaction was very odd. They showed her the Jamaica photograph and she was visibly startled, but said she didn't recognise the man in the photograph, to whom she bears more than a passing resemblance. They asked if she could put us in touch with him.
'I'm afraid I don't know how to get in contact with him,' she said.
So she did have a son called Robin? 'No, I don't. I don't have a son at all.'
They asked her if she had any other children. 'Yes, a daughter.'
But no son and certainly not a son who went to Bristol Cathedral School?
'No,' she said, and went on to deny she was Pamela Gunningham, insisting that the electoral roll must be incorrect.
Their conversation with Peter Gunningham, who now lived in a gated development in the suburb of Kingsdown, was equally baffling.
Again, they presented the photograph of Banksy/Robin Gunningham. Mr Gunningham said he didn't recognise the person in the picture. They told him that they believed his son to be Banksy. 'No,' he replied. 'I can't help you, really.'
Mr Gunningham politely continued to deny that his son was Banksy but his manner was almost playful. He refused to give them any information about Robin. It was all very strange.
Had the couple never heard of Banksy or Robin Gunningham, one might have expected a reaction of complete bewilderment. This did not seem to be the case.
They then contacted Banksy's public relations officer who, in the best Banksy tradition, neither confirmed nor denied the story.
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