Jonathan King

Jonathan King is the stage name of Kenneth George King (born December 6, 1944, London), a wealthy pop music impresario who in 2001 received a seven year prison sentence for four indecent assaults and two more serious sexual offences on schoolboys aged 14 and 15. He was given parole on first application in March 2005 and was released, still proclaiming his absolute innocence of the convictions against him. He is currently awaiting an appeal hearing to quash all those convictions.

Musical career

The child of an American father and an English mother, King was educated at Charterhouse School and Trinity College, Cambridge. As an undergraduate, he wrote and sang his first hit, Everyone's Gone To The Moon in 1965, eventually selling a reported 4.5 million records worldwide. Before graduating, he wrote and produced further hits such as It's Good News Week by Hedgehoppers Anonymous, also discovering, producing and naming Genesis, whose founding members were at Charterhouse.

Soon after King graduated, his Saturday evening ITV series Good Evening It's Jonathan King, was seen nationally for six months.

He ran Decca Records for a time, and in 1971, 1972 and 1973 was acclaimed Producer of the Year. He performed and produced many big hits under different names, often two or three at the same time. He produced The Bay City Rollers and sang most of their first hit, Keep On Dancing. He backed and produced The Rocky Horror Show. His own label, UK Records had hits with 10cc and others. King usually performed under pseudonyms, such as 'Shag', 'St Cecilia', 'Bubblerock', '100 Tons and a Feather', although in 1975 a rendition under his own name of Una Paloma Blanca was named Record of the Year.

King presented his own daily radio show on New York's WMCA throughout 1980 and started doing regular reports from the US on Top of the Pops. These developed into Entertainment USA, a BBC2 series that reached over nine million viewers. He also started and produced No Limits which topped the channel ratings chart at over five million.

During the 1980s, he wrote a column in The Sun for eight years. He has written regular features in many other newspapers and magazines, and two published novels. In the early 90s, he stirred up some controversy by writing some jokey articles about Scots . He considered these to be humour, not racist at all and very much tongue in cheek.

King wrote and hosted The Brit Awards for the BBC in 1987, 1990, 1991 and 1992. In 1995 he took over A Song For Europe, the BBC quest for a Eurovision Song Contest winner and won the contest in 1997 with Katrina and the Waves' Love Shine A Light. Over nine million ITV viewers saw his Record of the Year shows at Christmas 1998-9 and 2000 and the annual show still continues on Saturday evenings in early December with equally spectacular ratings.

In 1993 he formed The Tip Sheet, a music weekly publication, promoting artists like The Corrs and Eva Cassidy, whilst they were unsigned or unknown, and such future hits as Chumbawamba's Tubthumping, Cognoscenti Vs. Intelligentsia and Who Let The Dogs Out. King recorded the original finished version of the latter under the pseudonym Fat Jakk And His Pack Of Pets.

In 1995 he presented a programme on Talk Radio UK.

In October 1997, the British Music Industry Trust honoured King with a lifetime achievement award. In a letter read out at the ceremony, Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged King's "important contribution to one of this country's great success stories".

In 2001 King received a seven year prison sentence for four indecent assaults and two more serious sexual offences on schoolboys.

Pet Shop Boys Controversy

In 1987, Jonathan King was involved in a legal battle with English pop duo Pet Shop Boys. He repeatedly accused the boys of stealing the melody for their hit single It's A Sin from the Cat Stevens song Wild World. When King continued with his allegations, the Boys took him to the court. The Sun newspaper, for whom King wrote the weekly column, settled the case out of court paying a small sum in settlement to the Pet Shop Boys, who in turn donated it to charity.

Sex abuse convictions

On November 24, 2000, King was charged with three sexual offences, dating back 32 years. In the light of the publicity surrounding his arrest, a dozen other boys (now men) came forward to claim that King had abused them too, during the 1970s and 1980s.

He was found guilty and sentenced to 7 years, and was released on parole after serving half that. Not long after, on 26 July 2005 he was invited as a guest onto Victoria Derbyshire's morning Radio Five Live show. The BBC said that:

"... the interview with King was intended to examine the possibility that his "state of mind was typical of perpetrators of paedophile crimes" and "It was not our intention to give him a platform to assert his innocence, but to challenge that assertion rigorously and to examine the possibility that his state of mind is typical of perpetrators of paedophile crimes."

On March 21, 2005 King's lawyer, Giovanni di Stefano announced that he had made parole at the very first application. He was released on Tuesday, March 29th. According to di Stefano, he plans to spend time with his mother then go back to work. He issued the single "My Love, My Life" after his jail release.

King still protests his innocence and he says he is confident that he will be cleared on appeal. He says his time in prison was not as bad as he thought it would be, finding his time there "fascinating". His only complaint was about the food at Belmarsh. He intends to spend time campaigning for others who believe they have been falsely accused. His appeal process continues at time of writing December 2005. Another new song "Plead Guilty" was issued by King at this time.

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