Banksy do, Banksy don't.

The country has gone mental over art! Banksy, the graffiti artist who everyone knows, has put on a massively succesful exhibition over in Brizzle. Everybody knows who Banksy is but nobody knows who Banksy is. Every year it seems, HMV have stacks of his books on sale post-Christmas and every year and every year, they go unsold.

But his popularity should have never been in doubt. In October of last year, Banksy announced his largest exhibition to date. In June of this year, amid much secrecy, his exhibition was opened. Watching a segment the show on the news really made clear the showmanship utilised by the hoodlum that is Banksy. I'm not art aficianado and to be honest, I didn't even know he had plans for a show until I saw someone's photos of the exhibition on Facebook. Photos of every-fucking-thing, but this I shall come to later. The exhibition was so secretive that the staff and workers of the museum were told the museum was to be closed for filming; and they were given three days off work. Banksy and his man-dem then went into the museum and set about fucking their shit up. He installed his own creations downstairs, his exhibition even taking over the reception desk becoming a burnt out ice-cream van. Amazingly, for an exhibition of this size and importance, it was all free. I once paid to see the film Boat Trip, which was worse than having my nipples wrenched by a mong, and this exhibition was free? I could only speculate how disappointed they were not too charge by the size of the queue.

So as it was, Hannah and I set out on a day of standing around whilst shuffling forward a few yards every minute or so nice and early. Luckily Bristol is only a short train journey away so we hopped on the first train after nine (as it's off peak then and cheaper for us students) and made our merry way over into England. I like Bristol as a city. The accent can be mighty comical (try saying sexual predator in a west country jilt...hilarious ain't it?) but the city is lovely and the day we travelled, the sun came as well. The train there was delayed, for signal failures and as the strange man opposite me tutted incessently whislt we were stopped, we added more and more time to our queue.

When we did get off at Temple Meads, we were lost as to where the Museum was. Luckily for all concerned, I had my new phone with me. It has a maps function! How terribly modern I am. So I tapped in the postcode of the Museum and it laid out a lovely route for us to follow and, this amazes me, it follows you on the map. So you can't possibly go wrong. If this was a comedic tale, I would make a jape that we did go wrong but even going via Boots couldn't confuse my navigational device. Predicting mass queuing, the Boots pit stop was to gather our lunch as chances are we wouldn't be able to head off buy anywhere once locked into the system.

After a long walk through hilly Bristol, we spotted Ronald McDonald perched on top of a an old brick building. Banksy was near. We hastened our walk and saw the queue. I made the fatal error. "Oh it doesn't look too bad". That was the 3rd portion of the queue we could see. Getting round the corner revealed a bull-pen of hundreds of people slowly moving nowhere. Then a sign read; "Queue starts on University road". So walking past the bleating masses and round the corner reavealed a squirming line of a few hundred more. "It's about four hours if you join now". Expect the worse, be suprised when it's not too bad is how I live my life. So we tagged on.

Us British really know how to queue. Though it was obviously well publicised how long the queue would last for, it was never bad-natured and never did anyone try to push in. People were happy to let others disappear and come back from the shops or the toilets or perhaps HMV where they'd just gone to break the monotony. People came prepared with chairs, with papers, with friends. Everyone just got on with what they had to do. People shared drinks and looked out for each other. At one point, a lady near us went weak at the knees (she'd just clocked me, I'm sure) and people around her showed genuine concern, offering water and a hand. I believe it's what makes us British, really bloody British. So we latched on to the end at about half eleven in the morning for a day of solid fun.

I'm not impatient, in fact I have so much patience, I should be a Doctor, but my stomach is. My crisps went first, by twelve. Then by one I'd had my sandwiches. Alas, by two, I was hungry again. My appetite is an annoyance.

Anyway, the queue didn't hold much fun. I bought a Banksy quiz sheet and got bored of it promptly. I then found a newspaper in a black bag and we worked out our BMI's thanks to NHS Bristols roving PR handing out free shit. It was a productive queue. By the time we got near the front, it was gone half two and my excitment was erupting like Susan Boyle.

I have the bladder of a diabetic infant so I was desperate for a piddle by the time we got in. But, funnily, I had forgotten all about it. Considering we'd been queing for over three hours and in that time I had consumed around one and a half litres of liquid, I should have been spilling fluid but the excitement took over. The excitement in the museum was palpable. You walk through the museum and the first thing you are greeted with is the now iconic Ice Cream van. And you realise. This exhibition is truly special. Banksy is an icon; for radicals, for artists, for the thirteen year old kid tagging a phone box, for the bloke who's been made redundant and is disgruntled with the government. Banksy pokes fun at everyone; from religion to politicians to the clubbers and shoppers via the Police and tourists right on through to road signs and celebrities and even himself. The crowds that slowly make their way through the galleries of the Museum do so with smiles on their face, you can hear gasps of horror and shock and bursts of laughter. It's something.

You get pointed into the main exhibit first and the first image you see is a striking and an hilarious one. It's titled Neverneverland and it's of the late Michael Jackon luring kids into his cottage with sweets. The image has now been put with a ledge with candles and flowers on it, a tribute to his recent departure. This picture quite easily divides opinion. One girl exclaimed "It's not right". One woman told her boyfriend not to take photos as it was "defamation" and she was clearly shocked by it. I found it amusing. It's a great piece of art.

Leading on from ther into the darkened room which makes up the crux of the exhibit, you're met with an organised mess of paintings, installations and photos. On your left is a huge, fenced off area which is a mess of newspapers, trolleys and cuttings with a recording of famed twat and shit-talker John "I bloody love the sound of my own voice" Gaunt criticising Banksy and calling him a vandal. The little images surrounding this bit gave a lot of joy. Peaches Geldof's face plastered on a wall in Africa; a hypocritical Davina McCall hugging a small boy in Africa. In pencil, Davina is saying "I feel your pain" whilst the small boy says "You're on my foot". Further along, there's a picture of a door, underneath it says "Portrait of the Prophet Mohammed (reclining nude). I laughed for a long time about it.

My favourite quote of the afternoon stemmed from one of these images. A group of folks from Bournemouth (I know this because I eavesdropped) had travelled up and one of these dicks decided why he loved Banksy so much. One of the images was of a burnt out Transit and on the side, it was scrawled "Bomb Disposal Unit". Now mr Bournemouth and his flagon of cider explained why this image was so good. "Right, this is why I love this guy so much. See this one here, all he's done is, right, all he's done is drawn on an exisiting van. He just wrote that on there and that's why he's so good." He sounded like such a goon.

Across from Goon's opinion on the obvious, there's a starting stencilled image of a young African boy in a sparse land. He's holding a bucket and he's wearing a shit screaming "I HATE MONDAYS". Next to it, two overbloated western folks are being pulled along on a cart by a small boy. The Lacoste symbol clearly visisble on the fat-man's polo shirt, his phone being pointed to take a photo of the struggling boy.

Opposite that, a large wall lying down with vomit on it, being sweeped "under the rug" as it were. It's hard to describe it all. I mean, I walked around looking at every piece, stroking my chin and saying "yes, but is this art?". The bold decision to allow photography in the exhibit meant people were not looking at things, rather living it through the viewfinder on their screens. Something that I found rather ironic.