Banksy thieves may be left dishmayed and out of pocket

So, Banksy’s latest artwork – a wolf howling at the sky spraypainted onto a satellite dish – joins the other 52,000 items on Interpol’s stolen works of art database. Or does it? The thing is, you can never quite be sure when it comes to the world’s most famous graffiti artist.

- CHRIS BLACKHURST

In broad daylight, three men wrenched the disc that acted as the canvas for the stencil off a roof in Peckham. There was a bit of argy-bargy with a spectator but otherwise, that was it. Bold as brass, right there.

The work had only appeared hours previously. Now, presumably, it is hidden away, on its way to a collector who has a penchant for nicked Banksys or is being offered around the boozers of south London, or perhaps it’s adorning a fireplace somewhere – strange, having a satellite dish in your living room, but hey-ho. Or maybe it’s back with the secretive Banksy, the whole episode just another of his elaborate stunts.

Because what do you do with such an obviously purloined piece? It’s easy to imagine the world’s currently most famous missing painting, Vermeer’s The Concert, residing on a basement wall in the lair of a billionaire somewhere. The gang, who took it from a museum in Boston in March 1990, also stole 12 other works. The gallery has left the spaces where they were hanging empty, in the hope they return.