Comedy penis crusader gets potholes filled in

A mystery "road artist" has been drawing pictures of penises around potholes in Bury, Greater Manchester, as a way to get the council to fix them. "They [potholes] don't get filled. They'll be there for months," says the artist who goes by the name of Wanksy. "People will drive over the same pothole and forget about it. Suddenly you draw something amusing around it, everyone sees it and it either gets reported or fixed." He says his drawings have meant the potholes get fixed more quickly, although Bury Council says they already have a plan in place to deal with the issue.



A spokesman for the council has describes Wanksy's artwork as "obscene" and urges him to stop his painting. "The actions of this individual are not only stupid but incredibly insulting to local residents," the Bury Council spokesman says. "Has this person, for just one second, considered how families with young children must feel when they are confronted with these obscene symbols as they walk to school?" But Wanksy says: "It's not an actual photograph of an anatomical part, it's a drawing, it's artwork. The naked body is a thing artists have painted for years. There are sculptures that don't wear clothes. It's artistic expressions.



"To be offended by that, you must be very prudish." The council spokesman says: ""Not only is this vandalism, but it's also counter-productive. Every penny that we have to spend cleaning off this graffiti is a penny less that we have to spend on actually repairing the potholes! People are entitled to express their grievances to the council, but offending the public and wasting their council tax is not the way to resolve the situation. We understand and accept that residents are unhappy with the number of potholes in the borough, and we have a programme of scheduled works to fix them.



"We have also invested substantially in new machinery which is enabling us to carry out repairs more rapidly. Painting obscenities around potholes will not get them repaired any quicker, but simply waste valuable time and resources. We urge the perpetrator to stop defacing the roads immediately, and ask anyone who sees this sort of criminal damage being carried out to report it to the police and the council." Wanksy says he has considered the legal implications of his drawings and says he makes them with paint used by professionals when they are temporarily marking the road. "It does eventually wash off. It's not graffiti spray paint. It's gone within a week or two. It's a step up from chalk."