A BROADCASTER is to appear in court charged with wasting police time after claiming in a television programme that he had smothered a seriously ill lover to death.

Ray Gosling, 71, of Colville Court, Nottingham, made the claim in a BBC Inside Out programme, which was broadcast earlier this year.

Following the programme, Notts Police investigated Mr Gosling's claim and arrested him on suspicion of murder.

Notts police detectives carried out a six-month investigation and are understood to have found no evidence to support the allegations made during the BBC's Inside Out programme broadcast in February.

Speaking after being charged at Oxclose Lane police station in Arnold this morning, Mr Gosling said: "It was a small item on a regional TV programme Inside Out, in my country, the East Midlands, to my people, with whom I have had an intimate relationship.

"Some people say I did it to revive a dying career. I didn't.

"I said it out of my heart, out of my feeling for people who had told me their intimate private stories and it got out of hand and I'm sorry."

Also speaking outside the police station Mr Gosling's solicitor, Digby Johnson, said Gosling was the "author of his own misfortune" and he was glad "nobody has been killed".

During the Inside Out programme, the award-winning documentary maker was walking through a Nottingham cemetery where his long-term partner was buried when he turned to the camera and confessed to killing a former lover more than 20 years ago

He said: "I killed someone once. He was a young chap, he had been my lover and he got Aids.

"In hospital one hot afternoon, the doctor said "There's nothing we can do" and he was in terrible, terrible pain. I said to the doctor, "Leave me just for a bit" and he went away.

"I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead. The doctor came back and I said "He's gone". Nothing more was ever said."

A Notts Police spokesperson today said that after full consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service, a decision had now been made to serve him with a summons for wasting police time.

He will appear before Nottingham magistrates on Tuesday September 14.