Gnashing of teeth somewhere near Gowanus*

Phor phuck-sake, that's the tin lid on the biscuit tin.

From now on, every time - and I mean EVERY-TIME - Banksy gets a pride of place mention on the BBC News website, I'm linking to this old post from the blog as a not so gentle reminder of what was a lost opportunity of bastardido proportions for the Party - which, incidentally, is now thinking of changing its acronym at the forthcoming Conference from the 'SPGB' to the 'SPOSIITFF. . . A'.**

What started out as a lame running joke on the blog of how we could accidently trip over something hip and current, only to come up for air clutching a Gareth Gates box set, has now mutated into a some kind of symbolic non-gesture that was apparently scripted by EM Forster.***

BBC News also carries an article entitled 'On the trail of artist Banksy', by Fiona Pryor, which seeks to tease out the enigma of who Banksy actually is. Aside from following the headlines - with added gnashing of teeth for full effect - I've not really followed Banksy's career that closely since our briefest of encounters, so I was surprised to read that even now when he's up there with Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin and Rolf Harris in public consciousness in matters relating to *cough* modern art, so little is still known of him.

According to the article only a select few have met or spoken to him - christ, I spoke to him twice on the phone - and the jury is still out on whether or not he is a clever self-publicist, albeit one who is also very talented, or someone who is orchestrating a sophisticated joke at the expense of the Guardian Media types carrying a political punch.

I'm not too bothered either way. I just wanted to envisage the scenario years from now whereby the Japanese and American branches of the Banksy fan club would be making pilgramages to South London to get their happy snaps taken outside a bunker-like building in Clapham High Street, before hopping on the Northern Line to get do the Abbey Road 'Walk This Way' photo op north of the river.

*I'm nowhere near Gowanus, but I like the sound of it.

**Socialist Party of Shooting Itself In The Fucking Foot . . . Again. I'd like to see the Millies or anyone else try to steal our identity after that name change.

***Throwing in the Forster reference as a sop to Will Rubbish, and his insistence that the SPGB is locked in an Edwardian time vacuum. Don't call my bluff by asking me questions about Edwardian literature. I know more about Gareth Gates.