The famous tale of a parking attendant at Bristol Zoo who collected £1 from every car for 20-plus years has been circulating for decades
Not me, guv: The mythical Bristol Zoo parking attendant has never existed and ownership of the car park isn’t in dispute
It would be a rare feat to have grown up in Bristol without hearing the legendary tale of the infamous Bristol Zoo parking attendant, who allegedly pocketed £1 from every car parked for over two decades before mysteriously disappearing with his ill-gotten gains.
This seemingly dedicated employee vanished one day, potentially millions richer, and when Bristol Zoo reached out to Bristol City Council regarding their missing worker, it became clear that both parties had been duped.
Both the zoo and the council had assumed this polite and punctual man was an employee of the other, only to discover he had exploited a longstanding administrative error and worked for neither.
This city-wide myth filled many young Bristolians, myself included, with a sense of pride, as if we had our very own D. B.
Cooper – swapping the audacious aeroplane hijacking for a 20-year stint in an admin role.
However, it’s widely believed to be a hoax, likely an urban legend propagated through early internet forums, email chains and adapted to suit various cities or job roles on social media – or is it?
Numerous individuals on social media claim to recall paying the attendant, despite Bristol Zoo repeatedly denying the truth of the urban legend prior to its closure in 2022, and there are even a few Bristol locals who will argue the same.
Even Britsol’s Banksy isn’t immune(Image: Banksy/Instagram)
Regrettably, we find ourselves in the prime era of misinformation, with even a recent artwork from the presumed Bristol-born Banksy at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, portraying a judge assaulting a protester, falling prey to social media manipulation. Some have even added a St George’s cross to the protester’s originally blank placard.
Artificial Intelligence has only exacerbated the issue, and as of 2025, the ‘insert-your-city Zoo parking attendant’ myth is still circulating online.
However, for the sake of clarity, there might be a grain of truth to the Bristol tale. A breakthrough in 2021 saw campaign group, Downs for People, who were protesting against parking on the Downs at the time, stumble upon a surprising discovery while researching the Bristol Archives.
Historical evidence, spanning from the 1920s to the 1980s, loosely mirrors the myth, shedding light on how parking around the zoo was managed in a haphazard, informal manner, which could have led to such a brazen act.
Volunteers, often without uniforms, collected “voluntary donations” from motorists pulling up onto the Downs to visit the zoo, with little understanding of where this money was going.
“We made a surprise discovery when doing research in the Bristol Archives for our current court case: There is truth behind the myth of Bristol’s phantom zoo parking attendant,” Susan Carter, the group’s spokesperson, revealed to Bristol Live back in 2021.
“For almost thirty years, from 1958 until the mid-1980s, and quite likely for 30 years before that, people were able to make their living as parking attendants, collecting ‘voluntary’ donations from motorists parking on rough ground outside the zoo.
“It is unlikely that anyone made a fortune, and from 1958 onwards, attendants were authorised either by the Downs Committee or, from 1983, the zoo (probably – that is when confusion may have arisen).”