UKIP leader Nigel Farage has dubbed his former party colleague and Birmingham TV presenter
Robert Kilroy-Silk “crackers”.
Kilroy-Silk, best known for his former BBC daytime talk show, was elected to the European Parliament as a UKIP candidate in 2004.
But he quit the party in 2005 to form his own organisation called Veritas.
His political career sank without trace after he quickly resigned from Veritas too.
But speaking to the
Birmingham Mail, Mr Farage said that recruiting Kilroy-Silk, educated at Saltley Grammar School, had been a major coup for his party - for as long as it lasted.
He said: “Everybody laughs and jokes about Robert Kilroy-Silk but actually at the time, he was a mega catch for us.
“For 18 years he’d done that programme (Kilroy), four days a week.
“Robert was good for us in the short term.
‘‘Sadly he went completely crackers and started to believe his own publicity.
“And didn’t have the ability to laugh at himself which is never a good thing in any walk of life.”