He is the super-slick charmer who always gets what he wants, but this one may prove too tricky even for Robert Kilroy-Silk.
Nick Morrison looks at the downfall of the king of daytime TV.
DOES your big mouth keep getting you into trouble? Ever feel that the knives are out for you? It is the favoured device of Robert Kilroy-Silk, the king of the daytime chatshow - two rhetorical questions to introduce that day's topic. There's even a website where you can type in your questions and it will put them into Kilroy's mouth. At the last count, there were more than 1.7 million such 'shows', the results of the Kilroy Introduction Generator.
But today's questions are a little less comfortable for Kilroy-Silk, the former MP turned chatshow host whose show has appeared nearly every morning for the past 17 years. As criticism over his column in the Sunday Express shows no sign of abating, he is fighting for his broadcasting career after he was suspended by the BBC pending an investigation.
In an interview with Trevor McDonald last night, pointedly given to ITV ahead of the BBC's Newsnight, Kilroy-Silk accused the Beeb of giving in to pressure by taking his programme off the air, and denied intending to smear all Arabs in the column. He said his comments did not damage his impartiality as a talk show host, and repeated his apology if his remarks were taken as directed against all Arabs.
But this is not enough for some of his fiercest critics, including Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality. It was the CRE which referred the article to the police last week, outraged over Kilroy-Silk's description of Arabs as "suicide bombers, limb-amputators, women repressors", and dismissing the Arab contribution to civilisation.
A poll in the Daily Express yesterday claimed 97 per cent of the British public backed Kilroy-Silk's right to speak his mind, although comments on the BBC's website yesterday were more mixed, with similar numbers calling him to be taken off the air permanently and congratulating him for speaking the truth.
For Mobeen Mehdi, past chairman of the Jamia Mosque in Middlesbrough, the BBC did the right thing in suspending him and, while freedom of speech is important, there is no obligation on a public broadcaster to broadcast every view.
"My feeling is that to blame a race is racism. There are individuals in all communities who are bad, and there are people with religious beliefs we think are wrong. He attacked Arabs, and my view is that is racism," he says.
"There are people in the National Front - should they be allowed to speak their views on television? If you are a presenter on the BBC, they should check what is being said, and what he said offended Arabs. There is a lot of anger at what he said."
Dari Taylor, Labour MP for Stockton South, also praises the BBC's decision to suspend Kilroy-Silk, but she believes that a genuine apology should be enough to ensure his return.
"For Kilroy-Silk, it is a lesson that if he didn't mean to say what he said in the paper, then it shouldn't be there. He is a public figure, and this is the price of being a public figure.
"We need to reassure the Arab world, and he shouldn't present his programme until there has been an examination of his words in the cold light of day. It is a heavy approach, but I believe it is an appropriate approach."
She says Kilroy-Silk could be saved by the fact the Sunday Express printed the wrong article in error - it has already appeared last April, and was reprinted with a few changes - coupled with the fact his is a popular programme, attracting around 1.2 million viewers, although this is 200,000 less than his ITV rival Trisha.
But then Kilroy-Silk has few friends at the BBC, where he is seen as self-important, misogynistic and ruthless. Known to his production staff as "the man with the tan", behind his charming on-screen persona is said to be a man whose vanity outstrips all else.
The stories about him are legion, from ordering a researcher to call the parents in the Dunblane tragedy at 2am because he wanted them on his show the day after the killings, to throwing grapes at female production staff as a gesture of contempt. To some extent, what matters is not so much whether the stories are true, but that Kilroy-Silk's reputation is such that people believe them.
His 41-year marriage to Jan and his devotion to his family also conceal a man with a name as a womaniser. Nine years ago, it emerged he had fathered a child with another woman while he was still an MP. He paid the woman involved £200 a month, on the understanding she never spilled the beans. Shortly after that scandal was uncovered, came the story he had propositioned a former Penthouse Pet of the Year who had appeared on his show.
He also has form for this kind of thing. In a previous newspaper column, he criticised Ireland's then-European Commissioner, Ray McSharry, before adding that he was "from a country peopled by peasants, priests and pixies". He apologised, his agent adding that Kilroy-Silk was himself from Irish stock.
But there has been support from unlikely quarters. Ibrahim Nawar, head of the Arab press freedom watchdog, says Kilroy-Silk was right about many Arab regimes, and criticised the BBC's decision to suspend him, a view echoed by Tahir Khan, chairman of the Unity Organisation Multi-Cultural Centre in Sunderland.
"He has apologised, and I don't think by nature he is a bad person. Everybody makes a mistake now and then, and I don't think he should suffer any more," says Mr Khan. "I am a Muslim, but this is based on humanity. An apology is good enough. He might have gone a little overboard and he should have made his point in a more diplomatic way but he should be forgiven."
But his bosses at the BBC may not be quite so forgiving. At a time when the corporation is ultra-sensitive because of the forthcoming Hutton report, his ill-judged comments may be enough to see his show axed. Fuelled by resentment over his lucrative production deal, which gives him an income of £500,000 a year, and distaste at his vaunting personal ambition, his downfall may be at hand. Less successful than his long-running chat show was a short-lived quiz show, Shafted. Maybe he will be.
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