Gary Glitter lost his appeal against a three-year sentence for molesting two young girls in Vietnam today.

The former glam rock singer, real name Paul Gadd, had his conviction upheld at a one-day, closed hearing at the People’s Supreme Court of Appeals in Ho Chi Minh City.

The court "rejects the appeal of the accused and sentences him to three years in prison for obscene acts with children," said Truong Vinh Thuy, one of three judges who heard the singer's appeal.

Glitter has always denied molesting the two girls, one aged 10, the other aged 11, for which he was convicted in March and maintains he is the victim of a conspiracy of British tabloid newspapers.

His lawyer, Le Thanh Kinh, told journalists today that he intended to argue that Glitter had suffered a "plot against him" by the press and that Vietnamese prosecutors had refused to listen to his side of the story.

Glitter has admitted that one of the girls slept in his room because she was "afraid of ghosts" but insisted that he considered them both like grandchildren. The singer was arrested in Ho Chi Minh City last November trying to board a flight to Bangkok.

Leaving court today, dressed in black and wearing sunglasses, Glitter shouted to waiting journalists: "There was no defence allowed!" Earlier today, he had announced his intention of returning to England if his conviction was quashed.

Glitter, the first foreigner to be tried for sex offences in post-war Vietnam, shot to fame in 1972 with the off-beat glam hit Rock 'n' Roll (Parts 1 and 2). Although just 28, he had been perfoming in clubs for more than 15 years.

Further hits — The Leader of the Gang and Do you wanna touch me — took Glitter to the top of the charts in Britain and America and made him monarch of the glam rock wave. But by 1975, despite selling 20 million records, he was bankrupt.

In 1998, after a brief but promising comeback, Glitter returned to the public eye when he was charged with possessing child pornography on his computer.

In 1999, he served two months of a four-month sentence at Horfield Prison in Bristol for the "hardcore, sick and degrading" images. The pictures were discovered when he took his computer in to be repaired.

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