David Bowie feared he would be assassinated by a sniper at a concert in Ireland,reports Asia One.

The 69-year-old star died in 2016 after a secret battle with cancer but Irish musician Christy Dignam, of rock band Aslan, has revealed that David was terrified about an assassination attempt when he took to the stage at Slane castle in Ireland in 1987.

Speaking on Virgin Media One’s ‘Six O’Clock Show’, Christy - whose band supported Bowie at the gig - said: “At the time Bowie didn’t want to meet us, because he was over here as an Englishman in Ireland during the Troubles, and [John] Lennon was after being shot a couple of years before that. He was real paranoid, because when he was going on stage, we were backstage and he went on in a military formation.

“There was about 12 or 16 of them in the band, and they were all dressed in grey boiler suits, so if there was a sniper there they could not have picked out which one was Bowie.”

Although Aslan tried and failed to get Bowie’s autograph after the Slane concert, they bumped into the star years later when he confessed the security measures he had taken to protect himself in Ireland.

Meanwhile, it was recently revealed that David wouldn’t let his Glastonbury Festival headline set be aired live in 2000.