Former pop star becomes first person to be arrested in relation to police inquiry as Jimmy Savile's Scottish cottage is vandalised

Gary Glitter has become the first person to be arrested in relation to the police inquiry into sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile.

Scotland Yard detectives working on Operation Yewtree have received information from more than 300 alleged victims and further arrests are expected.

Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, was detained at 7.15am on Sunday at an address in central London and taken to a police station in the capital. He was filmed leaving his home wearing a hat and dark coat and gloves, and being driven away. He was released on police bail until mid-December and was seen leaving Charing Cross police station in central London shortly before 5pm.

Glitter was jailed for four months in the UK in 1999 after admitting possessing a collection of 4,000 hardcore photographs of children being abused. In 2006, he was sentenced to three years in jail by a Vietnamese court for sexually molesting two girls. Glitter had always maintained he was innocent of the charges.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "Officers working on Operation Yewtree have today arrested a man in his 60s in connection with the investigation. The man, from London, was arrested at approximately 7.15am on suspicion of sexual offences, and has been taken into custody at a London police station.

"The individual falls under the strand of the investigation we have termed 'Savile and others'."

The publicist Max Clifford said on Saturday that up to 15 celebrities had approached him, fearful that their sexual exploits in the 1960s and 1970s might lead to them being caught up in the police inquiry.

Savile's cottage in Allt na Reigh, Glencoe, was vandalised overnight, Northern Constabulary said on Sunday.

A spokesman for the force said "abusive slogans" had been painted on to the walls of the property. Officers are appealing for anyone with information to contact them.

Last week, officers searched the cottage to look for "any evidence of any others being involved in any offending with him".

The chairman of the BBC Trust, Lord Patten, has said he is dedicated to finding out the truth about the scandal that has thrown the corporation into crisis, vowing there would be "no covering our backs".

The corporation is braced for legal ramifications arising from allegations that other BBC employees were involved and questions remain over what bosses knew, and when, about the Newsnight investigation into Savile that was pulled.

Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Patten questioned whether Savile could have committed the alleged crimes without anyone else knowing.

He said: "Can it really be the case that no one knew what he was doing? Did some turn a blind eye to criminality? Did some prefer not to follow up their suspicions because of this criminal's popularity and place in the schedules? Were reports of criminality put aside or buried? Even those of us who were not there at the time are inheritors of the shame."

The BBC chairman said the two independent inquiries that have been set up – one into the Newsnight report and the other into the BBC's culture and practices in the years Savile worked there – must get to the truth of what happened.

He wrote: "Now my immediate priority is to get to the bottom of the Savile scandal and to make any and every change necessary in the BBC to learn the lessons from our independent investigations."