Broadcaster Chris Evans was summarily "banned" from Bradford today, on the eve of the city's two-week summer festival.

Evans' award-winning radio show was to have been broadcast here as part of an exclusive deal between Bradford Festival Radio and the Virgin Group.

But the watchdog Radio Authority has stepped in to outlaw the deal.

Listeners to Festival Radio's Bradford frequency this morning, expecting to hear Evans, heard instead stand-in DJ Lloyd Spencer.

He put the last-minute switch down to "technical difficulties".

But the Radio Authority in London confirmed they had warned Festival Radio against taking the Evans show.

A spokesman said: "We have advised them that re-broadcasting a show from another station, as they were proposing, would put them in breach of their licence."

The Radio Authority is the body responsible for licensing all local stations in the UK. It awarded Bradford Festival Radio a Restricted Service Licence, allowing it to broadcast for four weeks in June and July.

The spokesman said: "Their licence application included no suggestion that they intended to carry another broadcaster's programmes."

Bradford Community Broadcasting, which operates Festival Radio, admitted there had been "an oversight" with its application.

Manager Jonathan Pinfield said he was still hopeful the Radio Authority might change its mind.

"We may need to ask for an amendment to the terms and conditions of our licence," he conceded.

"We will be pressing the authority for an early decision."

Festival Radio runs alongside the official Bradford Festival, which begins on Friday.

The station has distributed printed brochures advertising Chris Evans's show, and as recently as yesterday afternoon Mr Pinfield was saying: "BCB is delighted to welcome Chris on to our team."

Today he insisted that no money was involved in the deal between BCB and Virgin.

"They wanted the opportunity to broadcast on an FM frequency," he said.

Chris Evans, meanwhile, was broadcasting as normal from Virgin's London studios, on his national AM wavelength.

Asked if Evans even knew about the Bradford arrangement, Mr Pinfield said: "I believe so. We've never actually spoken to him."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.