Gary Numan: Bowie Kicked Me Out of Studio!

has revealed that he once had a run in with who kicked him out of a TV studios.

The singer, 68, was speaking on the I'm ! No You're Not podcast hosted by comedian Paul Whitehouse and his wife Dr Mine Conkbayir when talk turned to Bowie - who died in 2016 at the age of 69.

The pair had a brief rivalry in the early 1980s and on the podcast Paul asked Gary if he'd ever met Bowie and Gary replied: 'I've been in the same room as him a few times. He had a problem with me.

'He got me taken off of a show once. And he threw me out of a room once - it was horrible actually because I such a massive fan.'

Bowie allegedly saw Gary as a copyist at the time, taking issue with his adoption of a more electronic industrial sound. 

Gary believes that parts of Bowie's 1980 song Teenage Wildlife were directed at him, citing lyrics like 'Same old thing in brand new drag' as a dig at new wave artists like him. 

Explaining what happened, he told the hosts: 'Do you know I recorded a song called I Die U Die in 1980. They made a film of that to go on the Kenny Everett special.

'And then the director of it, I think was called David Mallet, who used to do Bowie's videos said, 'Bo's gonna be here next Thursday doing filming something [for the Kenny Everett show]'. 

''Do you wanna come along and watch it', so I say, oh, f**king hell dream come true. So I go along with a friend of mine, Russell, who's a guitar player.

'And we are put in this little side room and I'm quite little and I'm at the back. I'd only be famous 10 minutes... 

'And I'm at the back door trying to look over and I couldn't see much, but you know, we're in the same room.

'And then it all stopped and there was a bit of, obviously a bit of a kerfuffle about something. And then David Mallett came in and said, 'Bowie's seeing you and he don't want you here you've gotta get out!'

He added: 'Then I got taken off the program. I wasn't on the special.'

Mine then asked him: 'Was it jealousy, insecurity?'

Gary replied: 'Dunno. I was really upset at the time. Now when I look back in it, I understand that he had been massive. He probably saw me as a threat.

'I think there was a level of sort of insecurity in him as his career wasn't of course, quite what it had been.

'He was probably panicking about that. I've come along and I was the talk of the town for a moment and I think he just reacted in that moment. At the time it really bothered me. But soon after it didn't, and it hasn't ever since. It's just a story. It's an interesting story.'

It comes after last month Gary's wife Gemma revealed she's been left paralysed in one arm in a rare complication following spinal surgery to treat a herniated disc.

Gemma, 57, shared the health update on Instagram alongside a photo of herself and music icon Gary on a walk in Kew Gardens, London.

'Still recovering [from] the sadder outcome of left arm paralysis after my multi-level discectomy', she wrote of the operation that took place at the end of last year.

A multi-level discectomy is a surgical procedure in which damaged or herniated discs are removed from several levels of the spine to relieve pressure on the surrounding nerves.