Leeds’ street artist Burley Banksy is “freaked out” by his later-in-life newfound fame and it's making him feel anxious.
The 51-year-old, real name Andy McVeigh, confessed that he feels very nervous when he’s asked to speak at swanky dos. Plus, his 19-year-old son Danny gets embarrassed when his dad is asked for selfies from his fans and Andy isn't sure how to react.
The former primary school teacher and father-of-one is well known for painting LUFC colours on electricity boxes around the city, originating in Burley. He’s lost count of how many boxes he’s painted and has even turned his passion of brightening up Leeds into a full-time career.
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His newfound fame has led to being invited to guest speak at swanky black-tie events. He's treated as a VIP to every Leeds home match, where he gets to watch from the gantry in the commentator's box at a reduced price. Plus, fans ask for selfies from him in the street.
But the 51-year-old just shakes his head, baffled by the attention he’s been getting.
All he ever wanted to do was “cheer people up” with his artwork, with permission from BT and Virgin Media he adds, pointing out that he’s not a graffiti artist.
When he’s asked for a selfie, Andy said: “It still freaks me out a bit and I find it a bit weird.
"I don’t know what to do! Oh I go like...'do I do this? What do I do?' My son’s like ‘oh Christ!’"
'S****ing myself'
The ex-primary school teacher, who specialised in PE, opened up about how anxious he felt when mental health charity Mind asked him to speak at its 30th birthday event.
Andy said: “I was asked to speak at a big thing, Mind’s 30th birthday do in Leeds the other week. It was black tie!
"I had to wear a black suit and do a speech, I was s****ing myself. That was really weird, I felt like I was in Reservoir Dogs.
“I’ve kind of got used to it now but being at the do was weird. After just painting a few boxes, being asked to be a guest speaker - okay, quite a lot of boxes! I thought ‘What the chuffing hell is going on here?'”
He estimates he's painted between 50 and 70 electricity boxes but concedes he has "no idea" what the actual figure is.
Andy also sells artwork online but he’s lost revenue due to a combination of former Leeds head coach Marcelo Bielsa being sacked and the cost-of living crisis.
His canvases and prints, range from £40 to £150, which he says for an artist is cheap – “other artists tell me I’m not charging enough but I’m in the football world” and so his clientele are generally working families, who wouldn’t buy big budget items.
Andy said: “I’m definitely selling less canvases than I was. I’m in the ‘luxury industry’, I’m not ‘essential’ am I? A canvas or a print is not ‘essential’ anymore. If you’re struggling to put your heating on, you’re not going to spend £60 on a canvas for a mate’s birthday.”
“Fifty percent of all canvases and prints were of Bielsa. So there’s the cost-of-living crisis but there’s also the Bielsa-not-here-anymore effect. I sold so many canvases of him sitting on a bucket or crouching, because he had so many idiosyncrasies.
“Everything has gone down bit because of Bielsa. I mean, who else sits on a bloody bucket? With Marsch, he’s just a normal bloke. You wouldn’t ask for Graham Potter or whoever.”
'Broken windows theory' - How it all began
Andy continues to create art in the street in a bid to brighten up areas in Leeds and lighten people's moods.
He believes in the 'broken windows theory', conceived by the criminologist James Q. Wilson. It proposes that seemingly minor instances of social or physical disorder in an urban space can overtime contribute to an area degrading.
Andy said: "It's how an area goes from being okay to being rough. If a house has a broken window and if it's left and not repaired, then the next house will get broken, and then the next one.
"Eventually that house becomes derelict if it's left, then because that house is derelict, people think they can damage the next one and before you know it, you've got a street of worn down broken houses.
"When that happens, people then think they can just leave their rubbish there because the area is horrible anyway and it spreads. I read about that and that's what happened to Burley.
"If you go around Burley, you see rubbish on the streets and mattresses chucked. It's really upsetting, I don't understand it."
So in a bid to flip the 'broken windows theory' on its head, he decided to brighten the area up by painting objects all over Burley. Eventually his reach spread and Burley Banksy painted electricity boxes can now be seen all over Leeds.
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