Will Young was left seething when his record label asked him to kiss George Michael at the BRIT Awards.
The 38-year-old singer’s team were trying to get him into the music ceremony one year and suggested he team up with the late singer – who died on Christmas Day (25.12.16) last year – for a song before smooching, just as Britney Spears and Madonna did at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2003.
He said: "You know what I was really conscious of? People taking me as a gay man and bringing it just back to sex.
"Someone at the record company, to try to get me on the Brits, suggested, ‘Why don’t you do a duet with George Michael and then, like Britney and Madonna and Christina Aguilera and Madonna, you kiss at the end and we get our moment?’
"God that makes me angry."
Will also pulled the plug on kissing a man in the music video for his 2006 song ‘All Time Love’, but he now "slightly" regrets his decision.
Speaking on his new podcast ‘Homo Sapiens’, he added: "I remember years ago, I’d probably left T4 or something like that, and was off to a premiere, it was for the song ‘All Time Love’ and they said, ‘What do you feel about kissing a man on the lips in the video?’
"I actually rang up my mum and dad, and they were both like ‘Yeah, f**k it, do it’. But I didn’t do it, everyone agreed no, but actually that was only because I was thinking of my career.
"Do the maths – how many people want to see a man kiss a man, in comparison to how many people don’t? More people don’t. But now I slightly regret it."