Just to clarify Nigel Lythgoe's comments in many interviews that I was the original choice for the "nasty judge" role eventually taken by him and then by Simon Cowell but that I was "detained elsewhere".

Not true. Indeed I was the original, first choice but I turned down the role many times - offered well over a million to do it - because I'd done it before, in the 60s and 70s, and had no desire to repeat myself.

The filming for Pop Stars started in September or October, long before I was arrested in late November 2000.