Minogue reveals 'HIV blackmail attempt'

Dannii Minogue has revealed that she was once forced to take a HIV test after a newspaper threatened to print false allegations that she had the virus.

The X Factor judge was seen speaking candidly about the incident in an uncut version of her Life Stories interview with Piers Morgan, which was broadcast on ITV2 last night.

According to Minogue, a journalist sent her flowers and a note which read: "We have tried to contact you to speak to you with no luck, and if you don't speak to us, we have it on good authority that you're HIV positive and we're running the headline."

The singer explained: "I drove down to my doctor's office, sat there, put my arm out and said, 'I need this test done immediately,' and all I could do was have this piece of paper slapped on their desk to say, 'No I'm not HIV positive, there is no story' - and it quickly and quietly went away."

She continued: "I didn't know why someone would be kind of on my case about something like this. I had been working for an AIDS charity, the Terence Higgins Trust. Not many people want to be involved with charities like that, because they want to be involved with the cuddly, nice charities, and this is kind of heavy real-life stuff."

Piers Morgan's Life Stories airs on Saturday nights on ITV1.