Co-founder of Virgin Records who went on to head the film company Palace Pictures, which had hits with Mona Lisa and The Crying GameNik Powell, who has died aged 69 from cancer, made an incalculable impact across two separate art forms. In the 1970s he was the co-founder, along with Richard Branson, his friend and childhood neighbour, of Virgin Records, which grew into the world’s largest independent record label after one of its four debut releases in May 1973 – Mike Oldfield’s atmospheric instrumental album Tubular Bells – became a cultural phenomenon.
Four years later the company enjoyed a succès de scandale when it released Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols after that seminal punk outfit had been dropped by two other labels, EMI and A&M. Then, after leaving Virgin in the early 80s, Powell established, with the former cinema usher Stephen Woolley, a daredevil film company responsible for releasing many of that decade’s most groundbreaking and influential movies, before making its own once it moved into production.