Judgment day for the phantom flyposters

The future of flyposting - a multimillion-pound underground industry - is hanging in the balance.

Tomorrow the London borough of Camden will apply for Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) against three female marketing executives from the record companies Sony and BMG. The women are accused of using flyposting companies to advertise acts including Beyoncé, George Michael and Avril Lavigne.

It is the first time the legislation, introduced to curb the activities of vandals, drug dealers and prostitutes, has been used against flyposters. If the application is successful and the ads continue to appear, the executives could be jailed for up to five years.

The case has sent shockwaves through an industry which, despite appearing to be indiscriminate and random, is actually highly organised, well disciplined and worth an estimated £10 million a year. Other councils are likely to follow suit.

But Kelly Styles, who runs Posters 2000, the company in charge of flyposting across most of the south of England, says: 'If it wasn't for flyposting, a lot of these small music venues and theatres wouldn't be able to advertise at all. It's cheap and it's very effective, and when it comes to up-and-coming bands with no money, flyposting is often the only way they have of building a following.'

On average, clients pay around £1 per poster, a tiny fraction of the cost of a mainstream outdoor advertising campaign.

'London is in danger of falling behind the times,' says Styles. 'Most European cities have authorised flyposting sites and London should have the same. We are a legitimate business. We are a limited company, we pay VAT, we pay tax, yet we are always portrayed as a bunch of gangsters and that's just not the case.'

It's a chilly Thursday night in Brighton and Billy, a flyposter for the past 25 years, agrees to let me accompany him on his rounds. 'I used to be a steeplejack, but I gave that up to do this because there's more money in it,' he says with a chuckle. 'Most of the time the police turn a blind eye. When they stop you, it's usually because they're after a few posters to take back to the nick. If I'm doing the men's mags I always know I'm going to get a tug.'

As Billy arrives at his first stop of the night, it soon becomes clear why the authorities have such a hard time catching the flyposters in the act. It takes less than a minute to bring the battered Transit van to a shuddering halt under a broken street light and paste the posters on an abandoned shop front. He jumps in, guns the engine and we speed away.

Much of the shady reputation goes back to the mid-1990s when the shooting of a flyposter in Manchester and a machete attack on another in London raised the spectre of turf wars between rival gangs. It didn't help that the largest flyposting company at the time was run by a character called Terry 'The Pill' Slater, even though his nickname came from nothing more sinister than his habit of popping vitamins.

'One time a car pulled up and these four blokes got out,' recalls Billy. 'One of them had this great big sword and they were going to cut me up. There were some milk bottles lying around, so I picked up a couple, smashed them and shouted out: "Who wants to die." They left me alone after that.

'That kind of thing used to happen all the time, but it has changed a lot in the last few years,' he adds. 'There's a lot more women in it now, and that's calmed it down. The only time we go up against anyone is if they go on to our patch.'

Styles, 34, agrees. 'I'm a mother of three, I bring my youngest into the office with me most days. If there was anything like that going on I just wouldn't be involved.'

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