Everything about Robert Kilroy-silk totally explained
Robert Michael Kilroy-Silk (born
19 May 1942) is a British politician, independent
Member of the European Parliament and a well-known former
presenter of his the daytime talk show
Kilroy. Before this he was a university
lecturer and
Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) who recently stood successfully for the
UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the
2004 election to the
European Parliament, before leaving them in 2005 to found a new party called "
Veritas", from which he in turn resigned as leader later the same year.
Education and background
Family
Robert Silk was born in
Birmingham, the son of William Silk, a
Royal Navy stoker, and his wife Rose. William Silk was lost at sea the following year, aged 22. Rose then married his best friend, John Kilroy, a car worker at the
Rootes plant in the West Midlands, who adopted the young boy and gave him the first part of his surname.
In 1963, Kilroy-Silk married Jan Beech, a shop steward's daughter. They have a son (Dominic), a daughter (Natasha), and a grandson (Zachary).
Education
He was educated at Cheeseley Grammar School,
Birmingham and later attended the
London School of Economics before he became a lecturer in politics at
Liverpool University from 1966-1974. He published a theoretical work,
Socialism since Marx, in 1972.
Political career
Labour MP
He was a Labour MP for
Ormskirk from 1974 to 1983 and for
Knowsley North from 1983 to 1986. In an article for
The Times in 1975 Kilroy-Silk argued that politics wasn't "compromises and bargains" or hankering after "a spurious consensus" but the function of government, particularly a Labour government, was "to impose its values on society. Its role is creative: to cast, so far as it's able, society in its image". Furthermore, socialists shouldn't be worried about being accused of dictatorial powers; they must go forward with "a tint of arrogance".
He was appointed Shadow Home Affairs spokesman, but resigned in 1985. In resigning his seat, he claimed that he'd been victimised and assaulted by members of
Militant tendency. One documented assault was on left-wing Labour MP
Jeremy Corbyn, by Kilroy-Silk himself. He wrote a book about his experiences, titled
Hard Labour.
UK Independence Party
Candidate in European Parliament elections
In 2004, Kilroy-Silk was recruited to the
UK Independence Party (UKIP) during that year's
European Parliament Election campaign, and presented one of the party's
party political broadcasts. His appointment increased the profile of the party, as did the support conferred on the party by
Joan Collins, who was persuaded by Kilroy-Silk to attend a UKIP press conference. Kilroy-Silk successfully stood for the Party in the
East Midlands region.
The result (using a
closed list form of
proportional representation) was as follows:
| Party |
Votes (Percentage) |
| Conservatives |
371,632 (26.39%) |
| United Kingdom Independence Party |
366,498 (26.05%) |
| Labour |
294,918 (20.96%) |
| Liberal Democrats |
181,964 (12.93%) |
| British National Party |
91,860 (6.53%) |
| Green Party |
76,633 (5.44%) |
| Respect - The Unity Coalition |
20,009 (1.42%) |
| Independent Candidate |
2,615 (0.18%) |
| Independent Candidate |
847 (0.06%) |
| Seat Number |
ame |
arty |
| First Seat |
Roger Helmer |
Conservative |
| Second Seat |
Robert Kilroy-Silk |
UKIP |
| Third Seat |
Phillip Whitehead |
Labour |
| Fourth Seat |
Chris Heaton-Harris |
Conservative |
| Fifth Seat |
Derek Clark |
UKIP |
| Sixth Seat |
Bill Newton Dunn |
Lib Dem |
Leadership ambitions
In the
2004 Hartlepool by-election UKIP came third, ahead of the
Conservative Party. At the party conference in October 2004, Kilroy-Silk called for the Conservative Party to be "killed off". The next day, in an interview on
Breakfast with Frost (BBC), he expressed an interest in leading his party and criticised the current leader,
Roger Knapman. Following this,
Paul Sykes, the businessman, and a friend of Kilroy-Silk, announced his intention to cease his partial funding of UKIP and to return his support to the Conservatives, fearing that the
euro-sceptic vote might be split. The branch chairmen of UKIP were canvassed on their opinion regarding Kilroy-Silk's challenge for the party leadership. Only a minority (13%) were sympathetic to him, a result which he objected to, owing to the small proportion of party members who had been consulted. Kilroy-Silk was threatened with disciplinary action if he continued, in the view of his opponents, to bring the party into disrepute.
On
27 October 2004, he officially announced that he'd withdrawn from the UKIP whip in the European Parliament, branding the party "incompetent". However, he said that he'd be staying on as a member of UKIP in an independent capacity, and would continue to challenge for the leadership.
UKIP's constitution states that 70 days' notice is required before a leadership ballot can take place. With the
next general election in the UK expected in spring 2005, Kilroy pushed for an EGM of the party as early as possible. On
3 November 2004, Kilroy said he intended to be leader by Christmas, though this would have been impossible under the rules.
With his attempt at the leadership going nowhere, in late 2004 and early 2005, there was speculation that Kilroy-Silk would leave UKIP and either found a new party, or join an existing one with similar views. The
English Democrats party stated that it would be a natural home for the pro-English, anti-European politician. However, unable to find a party who would allow him to be leader, he found that his only option would be to set up his own party.
On
20 January 2005, Kilroy announced that he'd left the UKIP after nine months as a member. It came after party officials started proceedings to remove Kilroy-Silk as he became increasingly frustrated with their approach. Rumours were abound that he was planning on setting up a new party under the name "Veritas", though Kilroy-Silk initially neither confirmed nor denied them.
Veritas
On
30 January 2005, the plans to launch
Veritas were confirmed, and boosted by the announcement that UKIP's leader in the
London Assembly,
Damian Hockney, had defected to Veritas, becoming its first Deputy Leader.
The party was formally launched on
2 February 2005 at Hinckley Golf Club (Leicestershire). Kilroy-Silk's former colleagues in UKIP gave the new party the nickname "Vanitas". In the
2005 general election, Kilroy-Silk contested the seat of
Erewash, but came fourth, barely keeping his deposit.
On
12 July 2005, party member Ken Wharton announced his intention to challenge Kilroy-Silk for the leadership, claiming party members are "not being looked after". Discontented party members set up the Veritas Members Association to "put the truth back into Veritas".
(External Link
)
On
29 July 2005, Veritas announced the resignation of Kilroy-Silk as Party Leader.
(External Link) In his resignation statement, he said: "It was clear from the general election result - and more recently that of the Cheadle byelection - that the electors are content with the old parties and that it would be virtually impossible for a new party to make a significant impact given the nature of our electoral system. We tried and failed."
Independent MEP
As of January 2006, Kilroy-Silk remains a member of the Veritas Party, but sits as an Independent MEP. Many Veritas Party members question this and are asking
Patrick Eston, leader of the Veritas Party, why Kilroy-Silk is allowed to continue his party membership.
(External Link) Kilroy-Silk continues to sit in the European Parliament despite having been elected as a member of UKIP under the party list system, and there have been calls for him to resign his seat so that it can be returned to a UKIP member.
Marks & Spencer
In
February 2007, Kilroy accused
Marks and Spencer, the UK clothing chain, of installing distorting mirrors in its ladies' changing rooms to produce a more flattering effect. Marks and Spencer denied Kilroy's claims, saying they were "at a loss as to what he might be referring to."
(External Link)
Women in mosques
On the
13 February, Kilroy was interviewed on the
BBC Radio 4 current affairs programme, the
Today programme, and claimed that government should intervene against mosques that refuse to admit women.
Media career
Kilroy
His show
Kilroy started on
24 November 1986 as
Day To Day and ran until 2004, when it was taken off-air after the controversy over an Express newspaper article.
Shafted
In 2001, Kilroy-Silk hosted a television programme on
ITV1 called
Shafted. It was a quiz-show based on answering questions and eliminating fellow contestants. At the end of the show, Kilroy-Silk would ask players whether they wished to "share" or to "shaft", with accompanying hand gestures. Kilroy-Silk's antics on the show were frequently lampooned by panelists on
Have I Got News for You in late
2004, particularly his delivery of this tagline.
The show was axed after only four episodes, and was listed as the worst British television show of the 2000s in the
Penguin TV Companion (2006).
Have I Got News For You
Kilroy-Silk has appeared as a guest on
Have I Got News For You on one occasion, on the episode broadcast on
30 April2004. The episode was notable for a heated exchange between Kilroy-Silk and his teammate
Paul Merton, which resulted in Merton telling Kilroy-Silk to "shut up". Kilroy-Silk began repeatedly interrupting Merton's explanations in an odd-one out round. The clue was that
T.E. Lawrence and
Wilson, Kepple and Betty had dressed up as Arabs, so Merton began speculating that
Kelvin MacKenzie must have dressed up as an Arab at some point, to which Kilroy-Silk replied "why should he?". It was later shown disc 2 of
Best of the Guest Presenters DVD release that Merton had actually said "shut the fuck up", but the profanity was removed via a careful edit. It is perhaps for this reason that he's since become better known as a figure of fun who is often ridiculed on the show.
In addition to the constant broadcasting on Kilroy-Silk delivering the
Shafted tagline, there was also great delight taken in a clip of Kilroy-Silk's angry reaction to being squirted with water by a voter during an election campaign, and also a clip when Kilroy-Silk asked a voter who had stated that he'd be returning back to his home country in a few months "why not now?"
After this clip ended, Paul Merton stated: 'There's never a bucket of shit around when you need one, is there?'
Other television appearances
On
31 January 2005, a television programme,
Kilroy: Behind the Tan, was broadcast on the
BBC. The programme followed him from his election as an
MEP for the
UK Independence Party through to his leaving and denouncement of the party. During this programme, he incorrectly referred to Iranians and Afghans as Arabs. When the reporter, Emeka Onono pulled him up on this, he replied, 'nobody is nowadays!'.
In early February
2005, it was revealed that Kilroy was working on a new television programme called
Kilroy and the Gypsies, to be broadcast on
Channel 4.
Andrew Lansley, Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, said: "Is there nothing Robert Kilroy-Silk won't do for publicity? I don't know why he's doing this but it's certainly not to highlight solutions to the problem."
In the programme, he spent a week living with a family of
Romany Gypsies at a campsite in
Bedfordshire to gain first-hand experience of their way of life and talking both to the Gypsies themselves and to those in the surrounding villages.
(External Link)
As well as these he also appeared as a panellist on the BBC show 'Question Time' where he got into a debate about whether he was a racist or not. He stated that he 'abhorred the BNP' (British National Party) and then went on to talk about free speech.
Controversy
Anti-Irish controversy
In
1992 Kilroy made a comment regarding
Ireland and the Irish in his
Daily Express column under the guise of attacking
Ray MacSharry, a former Irish government minister and EU commissioner at that time. He dismissed Ireland as a 'country peopled by priests, peasants and pixies'.
Anti-Arab controversy
His show
Kilroy started on
24 November 1986 as
Day To Day. It ran until 2004, when the programme was cancelled by the
BBC after an article entitled 'We owe Arabs nothing' by Kilroy-Silk
(External Link) was published in the
Sunday Express on
4 January. The article had originally been published in April 2003 by the same paper and 'republished in error' according to Kilroy-Silk, although during its first incarnation the article failed to attract the same furore from the national press or provoke any (ostensible) disciplinary action from the BBC. (Kilroy has mistaken Iranians for Arabs in the article and in a BBC
Hard Talk interview, erroneously associated with
Afghans, demonstrating - according to critics like Emeka Onono - a general ignorance about Arabs
(External Link)). One passage in the article reads
The article was strongly condemned by the
Muslim Council of Britain and the
Commission for Racial Equality.
Trevor Phillips, the head of the CRE said that the affair could have a "hugely unhelpful" effect. Faisal Bodi, a columnist for
The Guardian, wanted Kilroy-Silk prosecuted for "incitement to racial hatred". In an article entitled 'Islamophobia should be as unacceptable as racism'
(External Link), he attacked Kilroy-Silk for his criticism of
Islam after the proclamation of the death sentence on
Salman Rushdie:
Ibrahim Nawar, the head of
Arab Press Freedom Watch came out in support of Kilroy-Silk in a
Daily Telegraph article
(External Link)Sunday Express owner
Richard Desmond's attempt to acquire the
Daily Telegraph, though Desmond later dropped the bid for unrelated reasons.
Labour MP
Andrew Dismore asked why the BBC had disciplined Kilroy-Silk but hadn't moved against
Tom Paulin, the poet and
Oxford professor, after he'd made allegedly anti-semitic remarks. The BBC's defenders pointed out that Paulin appeared on BBC programmes only as a pundit and commentator, and wasn't employed as a presenter of a programme in his own right. Subsequent to losing his permanent position, Kilroy-Silk appeared on BBC programmes in the same capacity as Paulin, as an individual commentator no longer representative of the BBC.
According to the
Daily Express, 50,000 people responded in a telephone poll supporting Kilroy-Silk's reinstatement.
On
4 December 2004 a man threw a bucket of farmyard manure over Kilroy before he was due to make an appearance on
BBC Radio 4's
Any Questions?. David McGrath, from
Wilmslow,
Cheshire, was later convicted of the attack. He was given a conditional discharge, and ordered to pay £200 costs to Kilroy-Silk.
His personal assistant, Hilary Hunter, who precipitated the whole row by sending the old article to the Express, did her best to repair the damage. "He isn't a racist at all - he employs a black driver," she told The Observer, while reading a book about the benefits of the slave trade, a quote which is sometimes incorrectly attributed to Kilroy himself.
(External Link)
The story is related in Chas Newkey-Burden's book Great Email Disasters.
Alleged attack
Kilroy attempted unsuccessfully to press charges against a man who he claimed "smashed a bottle of water against the side of his head" while Kilroy was being interviewed by a European television crew outside the Asda supermarket in
Long Eaton, part of the
Erewash constituency during the election campaign. Kilroy described this as a "deliberate, premeditated and cowardly attack by an adult man who should have known better". The alleged assailant stated that he merely squirted Kilroy with water from a plastic bottle before running away; this account was corroborated by the TV crew which filmed of the incident. The police decided not to prosecute.
Offices held
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