Robert Kilroy-Silk

Robert Kilroy-Silk (born 19 May 1942) is a British politician and is well-known as the presenter of his former daytime television confessional talk show, Kilroy. Onetime university lecturer and Labour Party MP, he more recently stood successfully for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the 2004 European Parliament Election.

Education and early political career

In May 1942, 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 West Midlands Rootes plant, later British Leyland, who adopted the young boy and gave him the first part of his surname.

He was educated at Saltley Grammar School, Birmingham, and later at the London School of Economics and then became a lecturer in politics at Liverpool University from 1966-1974.

He was a Labour MP for Ormskirk from 1974 to 1983 and for Knowsley North from 1983 to 1986. He was appointed Shadow Home Affairs spokesman, but resigned in 1985.

Kilroy

His show Kilroy, started on 24 November 1986 as Day To Day and ran until 2004, when the programme was suspended by the BBC after Kilroy-Silk wrote an article published in the Sunday Express, about Arabs, which was strongly condemned by the Muslim Council of Britain and the Commission for Racial Equality.

An Arab columnist for The Guardian wanted Kilroy-Silk prosecuted for "incitement to racial hatred". In an article entitled "Islamophobia should be as unacceptable as racism" (Guardian Unlimited Monday January 12, 2004) Faisal Bodi attacked Kilroy-Silk for his criticism of the Islamic death sentence on Salman Rushdie:

During the Salman Rushdie affair in 1989, he [Kilroy-Silk] wrote that if Britain's "resident ayatollahs" could not "accept British values and laws then there is no reason at all why the British should feel any need, still less compulsion, to accommodate theirs". Buoyed by the support of liberals in a debate that was wrongly characterised as free speech versus censorship he went much further. "Muslims everywhere behave with equal savagery. They behead criminals, stone to death female - only female - adulteresses, throw acid in the faces of women who refuse to wear the chador, mutilate the genitals of young girls and ritually abuse animals," he wrote for the Daily Express in 1995.

The affair could have larger ramifications, such as affecting the chances of Sunday Express owner Richard Desmond acquiring The Daily Telegraph. Trevor Phillips, the head of the Commission for Racial Equality said that the affair could have a "hugely unhelpful" effect. A new "public interest test" is to be applied before a media magnate is permitted to buy another paper.

Labour MP Andrew Dismore wonders why the BBC has disciplined Kilroy-Silk but had not moved against Tom Paulin, the poet and Oxford professor.

Ibrahim Nawar, the head of Saudi Arabia even have to struggle for the right to walk unaccompanied in the street or to drive a car." </blockquote>

According to the Daily Express, 50,000 people have responded in a telephone poll supporting Kilroy-Silk's reinstatement.

Involvement in UKIP and the European elections

To be written.

In 2004, Kilroy-Silk successfully stood for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the 2004 European Parliament Election in the East Midlands region.

Personal life

In 1963, Kilroy-Silk married Jan Beech, a shop steward's daughter. They have a son (Dominic), a daughter (Natasha), and a grandson (Zachary). In 1990, Dominic was sentenced to 10 months in Ford open prison for mortgage fraud.

In 1995, it was reported that he also had a son through an extra-marital affair — a boy named Danny — conceived with Hillary Beauchamp, an art teacher, when he was an MP. Although Kilroy-Silk has never seen the child, he is reported to pay £200 each month for maintenance.