ORGANISERS of a 1980s themed charity event taking place tonight (Friday) fear it could suffer after posters publicising it across the district were ripped down.

Minehead taxi drivers Gordon Fagan and Ian Boden are hoping to raise around £5,000 for Help for Heroes, a charity helping those wounded in Britain's current conflicts.

Although the bulk of the cash will come from a 2,700-mile cycle ride next year, the pair are hoping to boost their target with a disco, barbecue and raffle evening at Minehead Social Club.

But after spending around £60 having 70 publicity posters printed and putting them up around the town and in neighbouring villages, the pair discovered last weekend that the majority had been removed.

Gordon said many of the sites they had used now had posters publicising a new venture, The Café, at Minehead's Café Mambo.

But James Eyre, managing director of Devon-based Lifestyle Enterprises UK Ltd, which owns Mambo's, said his company had no involvement in the removal of the charity posters.

He said he had spoken to promotions manager Lee Griffin, who had been putting up the Mambo posters, and had been assured that he had not removed any other posters.

"This is obviously an unfortunate coincidence," said Mr Eyre.

"The deliberate removal of these posters is nothing to do with us - we would absolutely condemn any action like this as we support the Help for Heroes cause and many other charities."

And Mr Griffin told the Free Press that he had also had his posters ripped down.

"My grandfather was involved in the war - why would I want to do anything like this?

"I've been coming to this area for about the past three weeks and have put up around 600 posters.

"Lots of them have been removed - it happens - but I've just put more up."

The fundraising taxi drivers now fear their poster problem will hit the success of their event this evening.

"People may well think that it has been cancelled or that all the tickets have been sold," said Gordon.

"We had put the posters up all over town and in lots of villages, from Porlock to Washford."

Tickets will now be available on the door, priced £3, with the entertainment getting under way at 7.30pm and finishing at 1am.

Any money raised will go towards the £5,000 fundraising target.

Gordon and Ian have already raised about £3,300 and are in training for their marathon cycle ride, which will take them from Lympstone in Devon to Lion-sur-Mer, which was part of the Normandy D-Day landings of World War Two.