AceShowbiz - Rob Halford will forever be grateful to a police officer fan, who agreed to keep the heavy rocker's 1992 arrest for public indecency in a Venice Beach, California restroom out of the media.

The Judas Priest star was hoping to hook up with a gay lover when he was arrested as part of a police sting operation and taken into custody.

"A million thoughts raced through my mind: 'This is it! I've f**ked up! It's going to be in the papers! I've lost everything!' And yet, at the same time, I felt oddly calm," Halford writes in his new memoir "Confess: The Autobiography".

But a cop recognised him at a nearby police precinct and took pity on the rock star: "He leaned down, pulled my baseball cap off and stared at me. I saw a flicker of recognition. He put my cap back on, leaned down and undid my cuffs. 'Follow me'."

"He shook his head (and said), 'I can't believe that you're here. Let me see what I can do'."

Halford's arrest was not mentioned in the press and he finally pleaded guilty to "another federal offence" and paid a fine to keep the case out of court.

"How did I feel? Stupid and ashamed, but also angry that, this late in the century, gay men still had to live in fear like this," Rob adds. "I always call this arrest my 'George Michael moment', after he did the same thing in Beverly Hills six years later. The only difference was that George wasn't so lucky with the newspapers."