Graffiti bearing the words “F*** Boris” has been scrubbed off a zip wire in a long-running seafront spray painting saga.

The words – in blue paint on the side of The Brighton Zip attraction – were photographed this weekend by an exasperated reader, who has been taking pictures of graffiti cropping up across the city.

He says he first spotted the words two weeks ago.

After The Argus asked Brighton and Hove City Council for a comment on Wednesday, the clean-up team got rid of the words the next morning.

The council says it is cracking down on graffiti and will issue vandals with £150 fines. It has also set up a hotline so people can report graffiti.

But the resident who photographed the explicit words on the zip wire said these efforts have made “no difference”.

The 50-year-old, who lives in Marine Parade and did not wish to be named, has been complaining for weeks about graffiti on a section of the Madeira Drive arches.

Time and again, the patch has been cleaned by the council, only for tags to reappear. He says the area has now been vandalised a fourth time after being freshly scrubbed.

Earlier this month, he told The Argus he had overheard a tagger shout “I’m keeping you in work” to a cleaner getting rid of the graffiti.

“The hotline doesn’t help,” he said. “Whatever the council’s doing it’s not worked. The taggers need to know that it’s game over.

“What we need are rewards so people will grass them up. There are loads of people out of work at the moment who would do anything for a fiver, let alone £1,000.”

He said he was standing next to a group of tourists when he spotted the explicit graffiti earlier this month, and questioned what impression of Brighton visitors were getting.

“It all paints a picture of the city,” he said. “It needs to be removed on a daily basis – it can’t just be left.”

He called for 24-hour patrols and suggested installing “spy cameras” to catch vandals.

On Thursday, a council spokeswoman said: “The offensive graffiti has been removed this morning. We will issue fixed penalty notices of £150 to anyone found adding graffiti to public and private land where they don’t have the landowner’s permission. If you see someone tagging or drawing graffiti, please report it though our environmental enforcement hotline on 01273 295063.”

Earlier this month, a vandal targeted Brighton Palace Pier, leaving a bright yellow tag beneath the structure. The pier had it removed, saying it was “not in the least attractive”.