It's not the most subtle of protests, but one pot-hole campaigner armed with a can of spray paint is getting results.

The mystery crusader - a professional artist and surveyor - is highlighting craters in the Tarmac by drawing a (ahem) huge male appendage around them.

With a nod to world famous street artist Banksy, the pothole superhero has styled himself ‘*anksy’.

His unconventional approach is winning fans - and getting results, with many of the potholes around Ramsbottom being filled in within 48 hours.

The mystery campaigner, whose works are all completed in non-permanent paint, told the M.E.N: “The roads of Manchester are in an appalling state, especially around Bury. I have cyclist friends who have been hospitalised.

“They damage vehicles. Sometimes it’s hard to know which pothole caused the damage because there are so many. When I’ve finished in Ramsbottom, I’ll move on to the rest of Manchester.”

He added: “I wanted to attract attention to the pothole and make it memorable. Nothing seemed to do this better than a giant comedy phallus. It’s also speedy, I don’t want to be in the road for a long time. It seems to have become my signature. I just want to make people smile and draw attention to the problem. It seems to be working, judging from the Facebook fan page.”

And he insists his methods are highly effective - with year-old potholes filled within 48 hours of his artwork. Others are fixed in a week.

He added: “Some still remain, it’s not a 100 per cent success rate, but it works. I’m inspired by the alternative style displayed by artists such as Grayson Perry and of course by graffiti artists like Hazer and street artists especially Banksy. It has a message that people get, but also has a bit of comedy value. Hopefully mine does too.

“However, unlike these artists I want my work to be destroyed, I like it when it gets dug up and replaced with fresh tarmac.”

But a Bury council spokesman said; “The actions of this individual are not only stupid but incredibly insulting to local residents.

“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? 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.”