Channel 4 and the production company are completely ignoring me .

Rang em and the fuckers told me to email em. 

link
Emails to producers reveal a dealer warned piece attributed to Banksy was being billed as not genuine by a firm involved in its restoration
Daniel Boffey Chief reporter
Mon 12 Jun 2023 07.00 BST
Channel 4 is facing questions over TV show The Greatest Auction after emails revealed a dealer warned producers that art tentatively attributed to Banksy and sold for £250,000 was being billed as not genuine by a company involved in its restoration.

Jeff Salmon, an art collector who has appeared on a number of Channel 4 shows, was told he was not required at the filming of the relevant auction scenes on the primetime show after he pointed programme producers to the testimony of a firm that had managed the piece.

Salmon had offered to stand up during the filmed sale to denounce the “Banksy” as a forgery. This suggestion was rejected and Salmon, 70, was informed shortly afterwards that he would not be needed for the following day’s filming due to “a lot of last-minute changes”, he claimed.

The show’s producer, Curve Media, denied there was any link between Salmon’s comments to its chief executive, Camilla Lewis, and a decision to leave him out of the auction of the “Banksy” piece.

A spokesperson for C4 and Curve Media said: “Jeff wanted to stand up and stop the auction declaring the work to be not genuine. We already knew there were issues around the Banksy and that these were going to feature in the programme.

“Furthermore, the auctions are not produced and therefore Camilla explained his ‘play’ wasn’t appropriate. The information from Jeff was passed on to the production team who again looked into the work’s provenance but were unable to find anything beyond this small mention on that particular website.

“The production team spoke to a number of experts and could not get a definitive answer as to whether this was or was not genuine so the inclusion of the work in the programme was framed around the fact these pieces are selling for huge sums of money despite this uncertainty.”

The spokesperson added that the choice of dealers invited on the show “evolved” over the two weeks of filming.

They said: “When we reviewed the first week’s auctions, Jeff featured so heavily that it was decided we would not need him for that sale. Jeff was never booked to feature in the Banksy auction. In the finished series, Jeff appears in almost every episode and he has not been singled out in any way.”

During the programme, two on-screen dealers raised doubts about the accreditation of the work on sale to Banksy. The difficulty of being certain about the piece’s authenticity was discussed in the show commentary.

But the programme’s auctioneer described it as a “Banksy on the Greatest Auction” and Robin Barton, who subsequently successfully bid for the piece, responded saying he had taken comfort from a lack of claims of authorship from anyone else.

Immediately after the programme was broadcast, a street artist in Liverpool, known as Silent Bill, claimed he was the real creator of the piece, which was taken down from a carpark in 2016.

The artwork: a stencilled rat alongside the words: ‘I never liked this Banksy.’
Street artist claims he created ‘Banksy artwork’ bought for £250,000
Read more
It has now emerged that, unknown to Barton, Salmon had also spoken to Lewis shortly before the sale.

Salmon had found the contentious art on a website of a company called Sincura, which was paid by a property development company in 2016 to remove it from the car park wall in Liverpool and to then manage its restoration.

Sincura confirmed it took the piece down and had restored it and that they did not believe it to be an authentic Banksy.

Salmon had informed Lewis in a phone call on 26 October 2022 that Sincura’s website was openly describing the piece as “not a genuine Bansky”.

“I said, ‘If you want to make television, I would be happy to stand up’, and she said, ‘No, no. This is our major piece, the major lot’,” Salmon said. “I said, ‘Fine do whatever you want with the information. Here is the site’. I guided her to the site and it was, ‘Thank you very much’. I was then later told I was not needed for the next couple of days. I was thinking, why not?”

After being stood down, Salmon emailed Lewis to express his concern.

He wrote: “To be frank, I am feeling victimised because of the information that I passed you yesterday. I sincerely hope that my not having been invited to today’s auction has nothing to do with that conversation.”

Lewis responded: “There is no correlation. So sorry for the inconvenience.”

Barton, a leading expert on Bansky’s work, told the Guardian he had not known about the claims on Sincura’s website ahead of the auction but that he did not believe he had been misled.

He said: “I believe there is enough doubt thrown on it that it is makes me nervous but I stand by the fact that until someone proves it is not Banksy it remains Banksy.”

The artwork was of a stencilled rat, a well-known Banksy character, alongside the words: “I never liked this Banksy”. It was one of a number accredited to Silent Bill in a self-published book of his art in 2017 and in a second book by artist John D’oh published by Tangent books in 2018.

“I believe there is enough doubt thrown on it that it is makes me nervous but I stand by the fact that until someone proves it is not Banksy it remains Banksy.”

This reminds of the time I worked in a comic shop and we had a shoplifter. Terrible thing to be a shoplifter in a comic shop. It's one of the most useless things you can be. Sure, they say it might help thieves with their reading, but I'm not convinced. Steal dog shit from the park if you want to do something useful.

Anyway, the shoplifter in question was a very good friend of my boss, the owner of the shop. I kept telling the boss, "Nigel is a thief, boss. He's a thief, he's a thief, he's a thief."

But my boss was having none of it. My word just wasn't good enough. The word of an untrained shop monkey versus his friend? No chance. My boss never kept an eye on his friend whenever he visited, and there was always stuff missing afterwards.

So I came up with a plan. I ordered a whole bunch of really nice graphic novels that I knew the thief would want, and I placed them front and centre on the display case.

That afternoon, the thief came in, and I said, dramatically, to my boss, "I'm just going for lunch, Jim. I won't be back for half an hour." *wink* 

I don't know why I winked, I just got excited because my plan seemed to be happening. Not even working, just happening. Anyway, I left the store, leaving only my boss and the thief inside.

I then spent the next half an hour making sure nobody else entered the store. I used every excuse under the sun. It was closed, there was a gas leak, a vicious dog...

Finally I saw the thief leave, his backpack now heavily laden with some of Marvel's finest. I raced back up the stairs, went straight to the row of empty spaces on the shelf, pointed, and said to my boss, "Nigel just stole these books."

My boss still, STILL, refused to believe it. Insisting that someone else must've taken them. After counting to 10, and having focussed on my breathing for a bit, I pointed out to my boss that:
1) The new books were there before I left.
2) Only Nigel and my boss had been in that store while I was gone.
3) After Nigel left, the books were gone.

And do you know what my boss said? Do you know actually what he said? To MY FACE, he said, "Well, it all sounds plausible, but I'm not convinced. In all great works of crime fiction, there's always a red herring."

This utter, utter, FUCKWIT thought that we were in a work of...crime...FICTION!!.

Anyway, my point is this, some people can't cope with the reality of their situation, so refuse to accept it. The consequences would be unpleasant to them.

Whereas some people, SOME people...know exactly what they're doing, and are deliberately, for whatever reason, trying to create the world they want to live in.

And some people are just Nigels.

All looks pretty dodgy, "the fact that until someone proves it is not Banksy it remains Banksy.” whiff of the endowment effect.

The endowment effect refers to an emotional bias that causes individuals to value an owned object higher, often irrationally, than its market value.

Haha, yes I had had the same thought. I'm no doubt guilty of it myself as well sometimes.

I emailed PC ........ hopefully they bite

Banksy wouldnt respond to fraud allegations against them, so why would they respond to this ?! 

sounds and feels a bit like the frustration we face here in the U.S. with one of our political parties and their mouthpieces..