Noel Clarke reveals sexual assault allegations left him suicidal

Noel Clarke has revealed sexual assault allegations against him made him suicidal and claimed to be a victim of a “form of modern McCarthyism”.

The actor, best known for playing Mickey Smith in Doctor Who between 2005 and 2010, was accused by 20 women of groping, verbal abuse and secretly filming a naked audition last year.

Speaking for the first time since the allegations, Clarke insisted he is "not a predator" and had "crossed the road to avoid walking behind women since I was 15 years old".

In April, the Metropolitan Police said detectives had carried out a "thorough assessment" of the allegations against the married father-of-four but "determined the information would not meet the threshold for a criminal investigation".

The 46-year-old told the Mail on Sunday: "There has been no arrest, no charges, no trial, no verdict, but I have been criminalised... If we don’t need police and judges and juries any more, if we only need social media and the broadcasters, then what world do we live in?

"At what point did Bafta decide they were no longer about films, but they were about judging people’s lives?"

He also revealed he planned to take his life with a folding hunting knife bought as a souvenir in Arizona 20 years ago.

“I needed to do something unsurvivable. I was reaching for a book and the knife fell out of my pocket. My one-year-old said, ‘Daddy, why have you got that?’” He told the newspaper.

“I said, ‘It’s just to pick the dirt out of my nails…’ and he said, ‘Oh, OK,’ and somehow the ordinariness of that snapped me out of it. Up to that point, I had been waiting for the right moment to kill myself. I was out of here. Done. I didn’t care about anything. My mind was destroyed.”

Clarke admitted he might have sometimes been “over-tactile” but vehemently denied groping or kissing a woman who “didn’t want to be kissed”.

The women made the allegations against Clarke after he was presented with the outstanding contribution to British cinema award at last year’s Baftas.

He denied all of the accusations made in a Guardian investigation but apologised if his "actions have affected people in ways I did not intend or realise".

Bafta suspended his award and membership of the film and TV academy.

ITV pulled the finale of the drama series Viewpoint, in which he starred, and he was kicked out of his own production company Unstoppable.