SQL Server 2012 :: Perform Update But Skip Lock

I open query analyser and on one tab I update a record in a transaction and hold it.

begin tran
update customers set territory = 'x' where customer = 'A00001'
--rollback tran

In a second tab I attempt to update all records in the table

update customers set carrier = ''

Clear this fails because of the lock placed during the first script and this is fine.

However, is there a way to get the 2nd script to ignore the locked rows and just update as many as it can? The obvious answer seemed to be the READPAST hint like follows…

update customers with (READPAST) set carrier = ''

…but this is still blocked by the original lock. I’ve tried combining it with all sorts of other table hints but all seem to get blocked.

The following does work, ignoring the lock and not returning the data

Select * from customers with (READPAST) where customer = 'A00001'

I’ve tried combining this with the update like so…

update customers
set carrier = ''
from customers with (READPAST)
where customer = 'A00001'

..but this is blocked too.

I’m so desperate I tried moving the update into a cursor and update one row at a time. Nothing worked. I thought I might be able to do something like this

If (Select count(*)
from customers with (READPAST)
where customer = 'A00001') > 0
--then perform update

..but this returns a value of 1 even though the following returns no rows.

Select * from customers with (READPAST) where customer = 'A00001'