DANCE promoter Mr. Mel Bush believes that someone is running a campaign against him in an attempt to ruin his business.

At the week-end posters advertising a dance that he has arranged were covered with paint or other notices.

Last week some 100 posters and handbills advertising the dance and featuring its main attraction— a performance by The Who pop group — were put up in and around Devizes and Chippenham.

The dance will be held on Saturday at Devizes Corn Exchange.

Rumours

More than 70 posters were sprayed with bright blue paint which completely obliterated the lettering.

Handbills and stickers displayed in shops, restaurants and pubs had strips of paper pasted over them bearing the word Cancelled in six-inch-high red letters.

And now rumours are circulating that the dance will not take place.

Mr. Bush, of The Bassetts, Box, near Chippenham, said last night that he believed it was not just pointless vandalism, but part of an organised campaign to keep people away from the dance.

Confusion

He said: “I don’t think the people responsible have a grudge against The Who, it is me they are aiming at.

“If this dance is a failure because too few people turn up, I am the one who stands to lose.”

The Who, who have played in Bath but never before appeared in the Devizes area, so far know nothing of the vandalism.

Mr. Bush said that if the anti-dance brigade wanted to create confusion they seemed to have succeeded, but he said: “The dance is definitely on.”

Police have been asked to investigate the defacing of posters.