A former Shropshire convicted paedophile today insisted he had never seen missing Madeleine McCann other than in posters and on television.

Raymond Hewlett, who has refused to talk to detectives working for the McCann family, said he would take a lie detector test to prove he had never seen the missing youngster.

Hewlett, formerly of Woodside, Telford, was in a German hospital in Aachan battling throat cancer but despite desperate efforts by retired detectives to interview him, they have failed.

It is understood he has since been discharged as there is nothing more doctors can do for him.

Hewlett, 64, was reported as saying: “I’d take a lie-detector test. I’ll take any test you like. The only time I’ve seen Madeleine McCann is on missing posters. And I saw her on TV in a bar once. But I’ve never seen her in real life.”

He added: “It’s obvious why they’re interested in me. But they can all think what they like. I didn’t kill the McCann girl. It’s the truth and it’s never going to change.”

Retired UK policemen Dave Edgar and Arthur Cowley flew to Germany last week hoping to speak to Hewlett, who is said to have been staying an hour’s drive from the McCanns’ Portuguese holiday flat when the little girl vanished.

When the negotiations between the private investigators and Hewlett’s German lawyer broke down, Mr Edgar, who has been employed by Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry McCann to look for their daughter, said he was “very disappointed” with the lawyer’s behaviour.