Tim Rice rules out collaborating again with Andrew Lloyd Webber

"Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice" is the formula for some of the most successful musicals of all time, but the partnership is, it seems, at an end: Rice has insisted that the pair will never work together again.

The lyricist, who will next month receive a special Olivier award for his contribution to musical theatre, told the Sunday Telegraph, "I don't think it would be any good. You've got to have a young element in any show."

"The two of us trying to write something wouldn't work. We're not relevant as a team any more," he continued.

The pair's work is currently enjoying a renaissance of sorts on Broadway, which currently boasts major revivals of Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, their final collaboration. Lloyd Webber has since written the music for Cats, based on poems by TS Eliot, which did not need a lyricist, and Rice turned down his invitation to write lyrics for The Phantom of the Opera.

Rice said: "We had a great 10 years. Very few artistic partnerships last more than 10 years, and if they do they tend to go down the tubes."

Rice and Lloyd Webber met in 1965, aged 20 and 17 respectively, and co-wrote The Likes of Us about the life of philanthropist Thomas John Barnado. Three years later they wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat as a school play, staging it professionally after the success of Jesus Christ Superstar in 1971.

Rice also repeated in the interview his criticisms of Lloyd Webber's latest televised casting process for a new UK production of Jesus Christ Superstar, having previously labelled the plans "tacky" and "relentlessly downmarket": "I just don't think it needs a TV show," he said. "If it's going to be cast with stars then you don't need to do the TV thing."

The pair also recently differed in their opinions of how the Olympics will effect the West End, with Rice dismissing Lloyd Webber's prediction of "a bloodbath of a summer".

Rice is currently working with young composer Stuart Brayson on a musical adaptation of From Here to Eternity, his first musical for more than a decade.