A repentant tagger has backed a campaign by The Argus to rid Brighton and Hove of graffiti.

Lee Megee, 32, used to clamber over railway embankments and tunnels to scrawl tags on trains, bridges and walls.

But he has now urged the vandals defacing property to give up their "mindless" work and channel their energies into more creative purposes.

The Argus yesterday launched a campaign called Tell On Taggers, urging people to report offenders to the police and the city council.

Supporters of The Argus's stance rallied to the cause and called for Home Secretary David Blunkett to extend to Brighton proposed incentives to crack down on criminal damage.

Mr Megee, from Hove, was once a member of a gang of taggers known as Legal Crime, who prided themselves on daubing graffiti in the most daredevil locations.

Now he insists he prefers illustrating more artistic murals at legal graffiti sites or where he has been given permission by a property's owners.

He is halfway through a mural in the gents' toilets at the Prince Albert pub in Trafalgar Street, Brighton.

Managers there had become exasperated by having to paint over tags covering almost every inch of available wall space.

They invited Mr Megee to come up with something more attractive, which they hope potential vandals will respect more and avoid defacing.

The Argus yesterday revealed how one tagger defaced Brighton's historic Royal Pavilion with the signature BOZAK.

Mr Megee said: "That is absolutely appalling. It makes me so angry now to see all these silly tags covering buildings, especially historic sites or residential areas.

"I can understand if there is an oppressive, concrete landscape people might want to brighten it up or make some kind of political statement.

"But these tags are just so mindlessly done. It frustrates and annoys me and I can understand why people get upset."

Mr Megee began his graffiti career at the age of 14 at a time before the spread of approved graffiti boards and sites, such as those at Black Rock and Tarner Park in Brighton.

He said: "It was like a fame game, a competition to see who could get their name in the most places, to become established."

The Government has mooted the idea of £500 rewards to anyone who names the most infamous graffiti taggers.

Brighton and Hove city centre manager Soozie Campbell hopes these incentives will be introduced in Brighton and Hove.

Two years ago the Brighton and Hove City Centre Forum offered a £500 reward for the capture of prolific tagger Richard Jay, nicknamed The Bouncing Doughnut after his distinctive tag which appeared across Hove.

He was caught after police released pictures of him spraying a wall off Western Road.

But Ms Campbell said: "We're not really in a position where we can offer up possible rewards at the moment."

The partnership is ordering extra batches of anti-graffiti kits, including clean-up materials, to hand traders in Western Road, where vandalism remains a problem.

The kits have proved effective in the past but Ms Campbell admitted a recent failure to refresh supplies may have helped encourage fresh graffiti attacks.

She said: "If traders clean off or paint over the graffiti as soon as it's done, the vandals get fed up.

"We had got the problem down to low levels but it seems to have been on the increase again recently."

Tarner Park has an area where graffiti artists are allowed to show off their creative skills, though there have been concerns about daubings spreading outside the approved spaces.

Helen Graham, co-ordinator of the Tarnerland Children's and Young People's Project, said: "A lot of the graffiti looks really good in the official area but we still get the tags and they look awful.

"Over the summer we resurfaced our football pitch but within 24 hours it was covered in tags again."

If you know who is responsible for any tags in Brighton and Hove or want to report illegal graffiti, call The Argus on 01273 544517 or the city council's specialist enforcement section on 01273 294514.