London, England (CNN) -- British police said Wednesday they have arrested a BBC television presenter on suspicion of murder after he told viewers he carried out a so-called mercy killing on a former lover.

Ray Gosling, 70, a freelance broadcaster, admitted on a BBC show aired in central England that he had smothered the unnamed partner in hospital where he was being treated for AIDS. Assisting in another person's death is illegal in England.

Police in Nottinghamshire, 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of London, confirmed they had made an arrest after the apparent confession on the BBC's "Inside Out" show.

Gosling made his admission in a taped segment of a 30-minute show about death, recounting how he smothered his partner to end his "terrible, terrible pain."

He told viewers: "Maybe this is the time to share a secret that I have kept for quite a long time. I killed someone once.

"He was a young chap, he'd been my lover and he got AIDS.

"In a hospital one hot afternoon, the doctor said 'There's nothing we can do,' and he was in terrible, terrible pain.

"I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead. The doctor came back and I said 'He's gone'. Nothing more was ever said."

Gosling, who has not revealed details of his former lover's identity or the exact date of the incident, insisted he was not "making a cause" of assisted dying.

In a BBC Radio interview he said: "Sometimes doctors do it on their own. Sometimes people do it on their own.

"And if it happens to a lover or friend of yours, a husband, a wife, and I hope it doesn't, but when it does sometimes you have to do brave things and you have to say - to use Nottingham language - bugger the law."