RUMOURS that disgraced former pop singer Gary Glitter is in a bail hostel in Bridgwater have been dismissed by the Government.

Justice Secretary Dominic Raab said the singer - real name Paul Gadd - has never been and is not in the Bridgwater and West Somerset area.

It had been suggested locally that Gadd was holed up in the hostel - which the Bridgwater Mercury is not naming - after allegedly being moved from a similar facility in Hampshire.

When the story reached MP Ian Liddell-Grainger, he immediately contacted Mr Raab, who denied Glitter was being held locally.

The glam rock singer, 79, who had a string of chart hits in the 1970s, was released from prison halfway through a 16-year-sentence for sexually abusing three schoolgirls.

There were angry scenes last month outside a property in Hampshire, where it was believed Glitter was staying following his release from The Verne Prison, in Portland, Dorset.

The protesters outside the bail hostel, which is in a residential area, reportedly shouted demands for him to be removed from their neighbourhood, with one man attempting to scale a fence.

Hampshire police officers broke up the protest.

At the time, a Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “Sex offenders like Paul Gadd are closely monitored by the police and Probation Service and face some of the strictest licence conditions, including being fitted with a GPS tag.

“If the offender breaches these conditions at any point, they can go back behind bars.”

Glitter was at the height of his fame when he preyed on his vulnerable victims who thought no-one would believe their claims over that of a celebrity.

He attacked two girls, aged 12 and 13, after inviting them backstage to his dressing room and isolating them from their mothers.

A third victim was less than 10-years-old when he crept into her bed and tried to rape her in 1975.

The allegations only came to light nearly 40 years later when Glitter became the first person to be arrested under Operation Yewtree – the investigation launched by the Metropolitan Police in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

Glitter’s fall from grace occurred years earlier after he admitted possessing 4,000 child pornography images and was jailed for four months in 1999.

In 2002, he was expelled from Cambodia amid reports of sex crime allegations, and in March 2006 he was convicted of sexually abusing two girls, aged 10 and 11, in Vietnam and spent two-and-a-half years in jail.

Several years ago, Glitter used to own a home in the Somerset village of Wedmore.

READ MORE: Gary Glitter protests outside bail hostel in Hampshire.