Organisers of the MERCURY MUSIC PRIZE were left with egg on their faces yesterday (September 12) after a computer prankster infiltrated the official awards website and posted a host of unofficial news – on the day the result was announced.
Fans logging on to the news section of the website, [url=]www.mercurymusicprize.com, to find out the imminent result of the awards which took place at the London Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane, were greeted with a series of false messages. They are thought to have come from an over-zealous fan who had discovered the administration page of the site, entered it with ease and begun adding his or her own messages.
The official winner of the award was listed incorrectly as The Buggles, as was the theme from the children’s cartoon ‘Pokimon’.
One fan who e-mailed nme.com after visiting the website said: “The news page had been scrawled with loads of messages obviously not from the official Mercury Team. ‘It’s been cracked’, I thought. But I was wrong. The Mercury Music Prize site designers had left their admin page open. It’s not hard to find either – a monkey could have figured it out.”
Some of the incorrect messages posted on the site included claims that Damon Gough was due to dedicate his award to Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci because he was “so annoyed when Gorky’s`s were dropped by Mercury last year”, that NME journalist Steven Wells had been murdered by a Belle & Sebastian fan, and that Coldplay have announced that they are to split after admitting being “crap” and without “talent of any recognisable quality”.
A spokesperson for the awards could not confirm the prank had taken place.