BBC presenter Ray Gosling believed confessing to the mercy killing of a lover would not cause "many ripples", his solicitor said yesterday.

Digby Johnson said his client was taken to a friend's house after being ushered out of a back entrance at Nottingham's Oxclose Lane police station this afternoon.

Mr Gosling was arrested on Wednesday morning on suspicion of murder and questioned by detectives on five separate occasions over 30 hours before he was granted bail.

The 70-year-old's arrest came after he revealed on BBC East Midlands' Inside Out programme that he smothered a male lover as he lay in a hospital bed dying of Aids.

Yesterday, Mr Johnson said Mr Gosling was "very surprised" at the reaction the programme received after it aired on Monday evening.

Mr Johnson said: "Ray thought it was a fairly short item on a regional television programme and it wouldn't cause many ripples. The very magnitude of the attention really has taken him aback and has perhaps given him cause for thought in itself."

Mr Johnson added that his client would be on police bail for the next couple of months while detectives sifted through documentation and interviewed other witnesses.

Earlier yesterday, Mr Johnson said Mr Gosling had not named the victim during questioning. But when asked on the steps of the police station whether the lover's identity had been revealed during interviews, the solicitor refused to say.