Dirty Hit founder Jamie Oborne has paid tribute to company partner Ugo Ehiogu, who passed away this morning at the age of 44.
The former England and Aston Villa footballer suffered a cardiac arrest yesterday during a training session in his current capacity as Tottenham Hotspur’s under-23 team coach. He was given treatment onsite but died later in hospital.
After retiring from football in 2009, he co-founded Dirty Hit with Oborne, signing the band Little Comets.
Earlier this morning, Oborne tweeted: “Gutted to hear that my friend Ugo has tragically passed away. I will always treasure the memories of our chats about love, life, hopes and dreams. Feel very blessed to have had you in my life, love to Gemma and the little man. Such a sad day. X.”
Ehiogu discussed his move into music with Sky Sports shortly after the launch of Dirty Hit, where he spoke about the influence of reality shows like The X Factor on the music industry and his passion for music.
"With such programmes like X Factor, it is not always won by the person with the best voice," he said. "They are looking for marketable people as opposed to people with actual, real singing potential. That does play a part, for sure. There is loads of room for all kinds of acts and bands who make it through hard work and gigging to 200/300 people. There isn't a lot of that coming through, or there certainly isn't in the press and to that extent it doesn't get glamorised as much as X Factor winners or contestants."
Oborne and Dirty Hit have enjoyed major success of late with The 1975, whose album I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It topped the UK albums chart last year. The band also won the British Group Award at the 2017 BRITs earlier this year.
Oborne also picked up the Manager Of The Year Award at the 2017 Music Week Awards earlier this month.
