Master of the mediocre Banksy does it again . Two spray paintings by Banksy sold for an above-estimate £120,000 pounds each in a London sale of urban art last night.

“Laugh Now but One Day We’ll Be in Charge“  featuring a chimpanzee wearing a sandwich board, and “Bombing Middle England,” showing pensioners playing bowls with grenades, achieved the joint top price with fees at a sale by the U.K. regional auction house.

The most highly valued work in the catalog was Banksy’s early freehand painting, “Portrait of an Artist.” This failed to sell against estimates of 150,000 pounds to 200,000 pounds. Banksy’s stencil-on-foam board, “Glastonbury Sign,” acquired by the seller directly from the artist at the 2003 Glastonbury pop festival, sold for a mid-estimate 45,600 pounds.

They had been expected to fetch up to 50,000 pounds and 80,000 pounds each. Both were bought by telephone bidders. The 146-lot sale in an industrial space in Shoreditch, east London, the first of its type ever organized by a regional auction house, totaled 801,204 pounds with fees against an estimate of 672,000 pounds to 977,000 pounds, with 89 percent of the lots sold during the three-hour event, the company said.

“The results were mixed in places,” said Stephan Ludwig. “But considering what’s happening in the broader economy, particularly in an area like property, it showed that the market for this kind of art is resilient.”

The latest work by controversial artist Banksy is a mural ‘One Nation Under CCTV’ painted next to a CCTV camera at a Post Office yard in the West End of London. Banksy said”We could have put prints up for sale and made a fortune, but that’s not what this is about. We wanted people to be able to come here and have a go themselves. We did a show where we gave away free canvases to kids a couple of years ago, and this is just a progression from that. We’re giving away a piece of wall instead of the canvas.’

French graffiti legend Blek le Rat is set to appear . Banksy is a huge fan. ‘Every time I think I’ve painted something slightly original, I find out that Blek le Rat has done it, too,’ he says, ‘only Blek did it 20 years earlier.’

Described as Britain’s Andy Warhol, undercover graffiti guerrilla Banksy is not only our most important working artist, but one of the world’s most elusive criminals.

In January, a wall defaced by his spray can sold for £208,100. Everyone from Jude Law to Brangelina has his politically charged stencils on their walls

Madonna's husband Guy Ritchie is pulling out all the stops for the Material Girl's 50th birthday bash this week. He has secretly commissioned a  new work by urban graffiti artist Banksy . Just what the tagger comes up with is anyone's guess . No doubt a work of stunning originality and imagination . Well, there's a first time for everything . Madonna will be thrilled I'm sure