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Last Updated: Sunday, 3 September 2006, 14:04 GMT 15:04 UK

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Paris Hilton targeted in CD prank

Paris Hilton's album entered the UK chart at number 29 last week
Hundreds of Paris Hilton albums have been tampered with in the latest stunt by "guerrilla artist" Banksy.
Banksy has replaced Hilton's CD with his own remixes and given them titles such as Why am I Famous?, What Have I Done? and What Am I For?

He has also doctored pictures of her on the CD sleeve to show the US socialite topless and with a dog's head.

A spokeswoman for Banksy said he had doctored 500 copies of her debut album Paris in 48 record shops across the UK.

She told the BBC News website: "He switched the CDs in store, so he took the old ones out and put his version in."

It might be that there will be some people who agree with his views on the Paris Hilton album

HMV spokesman
But he left the original barcode so people could buy the CD without realising it had been interfered with.

Banksy is notorious for his secretive and subversive stunts such as sneaking doctored versions of classic paintings into major art galleries.

His spokeswoman said he had tampered with the CDs in branches of HMV and Virgin as well as independent record stores.

He visited cities including Bristol, Brighton, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow and London, she added.

A spokesman for HMV said the chain had recovered seven CDs from two Brighton shops but was unaware that other locations were affected.

Artistic leeway

No customers had complained or returned a doctored version, he said.

"It's not the type of behaviour you'd want to see happening very often," he said.

"I guess you can give an individual such as Banksy a little bit of leeway for his own particular brand of artistic engagement.

"Often people might have a view on something but feel they can't always express it, but it's down to the likes of Banksy to say often what people think about things.

"And it might be that there will be some people who agree with his views on the Paris Hilton album."

A spokesman for Virgin Megastores said staff were searching for affected CDs but it was proving hard to find them all.

"I have to take my hat off - it's a very good stunt," he added.

I also heard it on Radio 5 whilst driving back from town today.

Ironically he has succeeded in giving her loads of publicity! ;D

I saw a copy at the weekend a friend had found.
On the credits page he has replaced one of Paris's credits with
Banksy & Mister DM and also someone called Paul Free has been
touched in as well... I've just read that Mister DM could be Danger Mouse...
He could have done the remix that is on the album.

Read more:

breakingnews.iol.ie/entertainment/story.asp?j=194272138&p=y94z7z844

As in, I mean the Banksy punked version.... search paris hilton punked

It's here

2-300 copies already?
Should think will be seeing loads of them soon enough, must be the easiest of his works yet to bootleg.
£300 for a cd that you can't verify as genuine , what's that about fools and their money?

www.itv.com/news/entertainment_b0cc5c78bd7c6e1cd67dc071657749e5.html

Banksy strikes Paris debut
11.37, Mon Sep 4 2006

Celebrity Paris Hilton has been hit by "guerilla artist" Banksy after he tampered with hundreds of copies of her latest album.

The underground artist doctored the album sleeves by superimposing a dog's head on top of the singer's topless body, before smuggling the copies into record shops.

The 500 "reworked" albums also came with a sticker on the cover, claiming that the album contained the hits: Why am I Famous?, What Have I Done? and What Am I For?

A picture of the star emerging from a luxury car inside the accompanying booklet was retouched to include a group of homeless people.

The songs were replaced with a 40-minute CD remixed by an artist, only giving his name as DM, but rumours suggest it could be Danger Mouse - one half of Gnarls Barkley.

It's thought Banksy placed the albums next to the authentic Paris Hilton albums last week. The artist left the original barcode on so people could buy the CD without realising it had been interfered with.

His spokeswoman, Jo Brooks, said he had visited stores in Bristol, Brighton, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow and London.

She said: "They're very subtly done and do look like the original albums.

"You have to look quite carefully to see what he's done.

"I don't like to speak on his behalf but I think he's saying you can be a celebrity but you don't have to do music.

"I don't know what the reaction will be in America or whether she would even get it."

A spokesman for HMV said the chain had recovered seven CDs from two Brighton shops.

"The album hasn't been selling that well so we managed to find three in one store and four in another because there weren't that many on the shelves," he said.

"We're planning to auction them, because presumably they'll be worth quite a bit and highly collectable.

"It's not something we want to see all the time, but with an artist like Banksy we can give him a bit more leeway and he can probably get away with doing things that the rest of us can't.

"He's said something I'm sure a lot of other people will think in regard to her album and the publicity might actually help her sell some more records."

Bristolian Banksy courted controversy with his daring art projects last year when he targeted a security wall in Israel, creating nine stencil sprays on the Palestinian side of the West Bank barrier.

He also placed a painting of a can of Tesco value tomato soup and a woman wearing a gas mask in art galleries in New York.

The British Museum also fell prey to one of his most famous art pranks when he placed a hoax exhibit - entitled Early Man Goes to Market - on the wall, where it went unnoticed by staff for hours.

Im not gonna believe it was done by Banksy until it appears on his website

I have bin asking for a small prize that we could give away in a competition on this forum from Banksy's agent, but I get no reply Then they go and do something like this and give away 500 CD's to people that dont even know who Banksy is so they can sell them for a small fortune on ebay and promote Paris Hiltons new album as well Whats the sense in that? Am I missed something?

they said they would auction copies for charity - which is surelt better than loads of geezers selling them on ebay....

the question is: who's they?

there are 500 copys around.

but what i wanted to say is that it's hard to become famous with streetart. you have people who listen to you and understand what you do, that's the good part. the other thing is, that, if it wasn't banksy who did this cd-stuff, there wouldn't bee people who say it's advertisement for paris hilton and there wouldn't be the e-bay people.
people who liked it, would keep the cd, because it's the leftover of an ingenious act of riot against the strange system we live in, but if you have a name, which people realize reading in the news, real art is degradet to the art of the monkeys who read tabloid.

edit:
nevertheless: i love it! ;D

Oh yeah , Banksy's greatest by far?
Forget the work he's done for homeless charities , Greenpeace, Stop Esso campaign, his criticism of the monarchy , organised religion ,globalisation, racism/xenophobia, the Iraq war, Israels' oppression of the Palestinian people, treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo, etc etc

I love this idea..But im not 100% sure it was thought through properly??? I gather people have seen the prices these are going for on ebay..The kind of people that would buy a "real" paris hilton album love money and believe that it is everything..So we all know that they are logging straight onto ebay when they see this story on the British Brainwashing Channel news on their idiot box!! Why do these corporate media whorebags that call themselves "paris hilton fans" deserve to own or even sell a piece of banksy's artwork which should be priceless??

Unfortunately, these days, it has a very high price tag