Armed with a British passport, carrying bags full of belongings and pursued by reporters, Gary Glitter, the former glam-rock star and convicted child abuser, flew to Hong Kong last night, only to be refused entry after landing.

His deportation from Thailand came after two days of low farce at Bangkok airport, in which the Thai authorities were determined to throw him out and Glitter, 64, was equally determined not to go. He said that he was having a heart attack: that turned out to be an inflammation of the ribs. Then he claimed to have tinnitus: nonsense, said the Thais after conducting an examination.

Finally, after wandering the transit area for nearly 24 hours as persona non grata, Glitter was deported and put on a plane to Hong Kong, only to find that he was no more grata there.

His absurd antics have obscured the reality that, after so many years as an international pariah, there is nowhere now that Gary Glitter can call home.

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Britain? Not really. The attentions of the popular press would guarantee that Glitter, a man who could once rely on the adulation of his teenage fans, would never have a moment’s peace. He has not lived here since 2000, when he was released from prison after serving two months for the possession of child pornography.

Vietnam? Now that he has been released after serving two years and three months for abusing two girls aged 10 and 11, it will not have him. Neither will Cuba nor Cambodia, let alone a host of other countries that have no desire to let a world-renowned child abuser across their borders.

For Glitter the world must now seem a very small place - almost as small as the list of people that he could call friends. Most transgressors, even in the depths of disgrace, have at least one person they can turn to in times of trouble: Glitter, it would seem, has none.

His former music business colleagues want nothing to do with him. Jef Hanlon, his former manager and business partner, has not spoken to him since 2000, although he did receive a call from Bangkok airport - not from Glitter - on Tuesday. Mr Hanlon had nothing to say.

Glitter had two children by his wife Ann Murton, although what space they have in their heart for their father remains to be seen. His son Paul, 43, who lives in Devon, said when Glitter was about to be released from his first jail sentence: “I don’t want him near us.” His sister Sarah was said also to have turned her back on him.

Since then they may have softened their attitude. Two years ago it was reported that they had written to him in prison in Vietnam. The police chief Lieutenant-Colonel Nguyen Duc Trinh said at the time that Glitter’s daughter had written for both siblings, asking how he was coping in prison.

“They told him to take care of himself and that everything would be all right. They ended by saying they loved him,” he said.

There is another child, Gary Jr, the son from his relationship with Yude-nia MartÍnez, a Cuban. She too has severed all contact with her former lover.

The collapse of anything resembling a family life for Glitter mirrors a fractured and unhappy early existence. Born Paul Francis Gadd in Banbury, Oxfordshire, Glitter was the illegitimate son of a cleaner and a father that he never met. He was brought up by his grandmother and his mother, who could not always cope, and at the age of 10 he and his brother were put into care.

He would run away constantly to London, performing in clubs when he was 12 and recording an album when aged 14. For years - and through a succession of stage names, including Paul Russell, Paul Raven and Paul Monday - success eluded him until at 28 he finally discovered the right formula.

It was 1972, the start of the glam craze, and with a drum-heavy chant called Rock and Roll (Parts 1 and 2) - not to mention bouffant hair, a silver outfit and thigh-high boots - Gary Glitter made his noisy, exuberant and more than faintly ridiculous arrival on the pop scene.

Over the next three years he sold 18 million records. When sales dried up he battled with drink and drugs, and by 1980 he was bankrupt, owing £170,000 to the Inland Revenue (and £60 to the Fulham Road Tandoori). He managed to pick himself up again, however, and embarked on a series of comeback tours.

There the rise and fall (and sort of rise again) of Paul Francis Gadd might have ended, had he not taken his laptop in for repair at a computer shop in Bristol, where the technician found 4,000 images of child pornography on the hard drive.

The man who made a career out of not caring how foolish he looked still dreams of reviving his musical career once more.

In June, while in prison, he declared in an interview with Vietnam’s state-run media that he was working on an album and planned to start his comeback from Singapore or Hong Kong.

Well, Hong Kong, at least, is now out of the question.

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