Pete Waterman: 'Geri Halliwell prompted me to quit TV talent shows'

Pete Waterman has blamed Geri Halliwell for his decision to retire from TV talent shows, insisting her headline-grabbing appearance on Popstars: The Rivals with her dog was the final straw for him.

Waterman and the Spice Girls singer were judges on the 2002 TV competition which put together the pop band Girls Aloud.

The music producer had previously served as a mentor on TV contest Pop Idol and its second season in 2003, but he decided to step away from the spotlight after that.

And he admits it was Halliwell's behaviour on their show which prompted him to bow out.

He tells the Daily Mail, "When she came in and put the dog on her lap, I thought: 'What am I actually doing here?' In our contract with ITV there were all these rules about what you could and could not do on screen.

"One of them, I always thought, was that no animals were allowed. So all the TV executives were freaking out about there being a dog in the studio. I didn't have a problem with her as a person. She was just a little bit wild."

And Waterman, who subsequently turned down offers to appear on American Idol and The X Factor, confesses he wanted to quit the talent finding show early in the series: "The only thing I regret is I didn't walk off Pop Stars: The Rivals three weeks after we started to get the kids into the bands. I went into it in good faith and saw it through to the end, but it left scars."