Jonathan King calls for boycott of Brit awards

A boycott of the premier rock music awards, the Brits, has been called by one of the leading music celebrities, Jonathan King, who is also a former producer and presenter of the awards ceremony.

Mr King claims last week's nominations show the big multinational record labels have elbowed out artists on smaller independent labels.

In a round robin to key figures in the music industry he urges them: "Spoil your ballot papers. Tear them up. As an industry we should not only be fair, but be seen to be fair."

Last week saw Brit nominations for stars including the Spice Girls and Oasis. The awards ceremony takes place next month.

In his memo Mr King says other highly successful names are not on the list because they do not have contracts with the big record companies. "For example, a star like Peter Andre is not nominated as best male despite two number one hits... Why not? Because Mushroom [his independent record label] is not a major of course."

He added: "Any shrewd observer can spot the glaring omissions. If any missing names just happen to be on smaller, indie labels, the implication is that the big boys have fixed it yet again."

Mr King's company used to produce the Brit awards ceremony until four years ago, but he said yesterday: "We resigned as producers because we felt it was impossible for our fair, objective attitude towards the event to continue.

The Brits are organised by the British Phonographic Association (BPA). Lisa Anderson of the BPA is the executive producer of the award. She said yesterday: "We changed the voting system because it seemed to me that it did some years ago look like a bit of a carve up.

"Now the record companies only get a quarter of the votes."