Key designer gets trust due

Sid Vicious isn’t the only gap in the Sex Pistols’ revival line-up. Photographer Trevor Key, concocter of much of their artwork, died last December of a brain tumour, aged only 48.

Key is best known for his cover design of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, which launched the Virgin label with Key as in-house photographer, and Dichromat, the photographic technique he invented.

Key and his friend Brian Cooke once joined the Pistols crew on a boat trip and got hauled up by police “after Johnny Rotten kicked a camera out of a Japanese press photographer’s hands”, according to Cooke.

“But Trevor’s skills as a businessman did not match his talent as a photographer,” says Cooke, who remembers the perfectionist Key working all night on jobs he certainly wouldn’t get paid for.

So his friends have set up a trust to help support Key’s partner Lesley and five-year-old daughter Letty, who have been left in “constrained circumstances” due to his sudden death.

Donations may be made to The Trevor Key Memorial Trust c/o Brian Cooke at Visualeyes, 24 West Street, London WC2H 9NA.