Police are considering whether they should interview a billionaire publisher after he apparently told a Times journalist that he had killed a man.

During an interview with Ginny Dougary, Felix Dennis said that he had killed a man who had been hurting a woman he knew. “I had a little meeting with him, pushed him over the edge of a cliff. Weren’t ’ard.”

Warwickshire police said yesterday that it was the first they knew of the allegation. “We are looking at the article and the information in it. No decision has yet been taken whether we will investigate or not,” a spokesman said.

“Although Mr Dennis lives in Warwickshire now it does not mean it happened in Warwickshire; the article states he lived in America.”

When Mr Dennis was told that the allegation was being included in the article, published yesterday, he denied it was true. “It’s a load of hogwash – I was drunk,” he said. “I withdraw it unconditionally.”

His representatives downplayed the comments further yesterday. A spokes-woman for the publisher, who made his fortune through the magazine stable behind Maxim and The Week said: “It is a ridiculous story and there is no further comment.”

The apparent admission came at the end of a long taped interview, which took place in the conservatory of his Warwickshire home.

Dougary writes: “What sane person – a magazine publisher, no less, even if he were on medication, would tell a journalist on the record, even after drinking a number of bottles of excellent wine, that he has killed a man?”

Asked by Dougary if he had fought with a man, Mr Dennis said: “I’ve killed a man”. Asked if he was joking and where the alleged murder took place, he replied: “I killed him. That’s all you need to know. . . . He hurt her and I told him to stop and he kept on.”

Dougary asked Mr Dennis: “Are you sure you want to be telling me this?” He replied, according to the article: “Don’t care. If they harm one of mine, they’d better know what they’re doing. And they’d always be warned. I’ll attack nobody without reason. Without trying again and again to bring this thing to a much more satisfactory and sensible conclusion.”

Dougary asked Mr Dennis which decade he was talking about. “About 25 years ago.”

Dougary wrote that during the interview she tried to get him to retract the story but he refused.

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