Michael fears for his life in the US

Singer George Michael has said that he can no longer return to his US home after being lambasted over his new single and video.

The chart star - whose Shoot The Dog track has been seen as anti-American - said he felt his life was in danger over the uproar.

He told ITV's Tonight With Trevor McDonald programme, to be screened this evening, that the criticism was due to homophobia.

Michael has lived in the US for a number of years with lover Kenny Goss. But he said an attack by the New York Post newspaper - in which he was branded a "past-his-prime pop pervert" - has made life too difficult in America.

He said: "It's been very heavily inferred that I was actually an al Qaeda sympathiser; that I thought that there was something not horrific and shocking about the attacks on 11 September."

He said the video was lampooning the relationship between Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George Bush, and that it was "not anti-American in any sense".

He added that his critics were unable to accept his opinions without his sexuality, saying: "For some reason I don't have a right to talk about anything because I got caught four years ago with a police officer in a Los Angeles toilet."

Shoot The Dog is not being released in the US but is available in the UK on 5 August.