Revealed: Kilroy's £1.2m loss

Robert Kilroy-Silk was famous as the controversial daytime television presenter loved by housewives.

Now he has achieved a political triumph as the unlikely standard-bearer of the UK Independence Party.

But what most people do not know about him is the financial pain he suffered when the BBC axed his show this year.

Accounts lodged with Companies House, seen by the Evening Standard, show that the decision cost him and his wife Jan £1.2 million a year in lost earnings.

The money was paid in " presenters and consultancy fees" channelled through his production company, Kilroy Television Company, which shut last month with the loss of 65 jobs.

The earnings were invaluable in supporting the couple's lifestyle.

Their home near Amersham, Buckinghamshire, built for one of Queen Victoria's ladies-in-waiting, is worth at least £3 million and a 100-acre estate at Casares, near Marbella on the Costa del Sol, is worth an estimated £2 million.

Besides staff to pay, there are the deer to feed, three aviaries to maintain and the collection of oriental pheasants, which Kilroy-Silk breeds. And for years the former Labour MP paid £750 a month in maintenance to art teacher Hilary Beauchamp, the mother of his love child Danny, now 19. His marriage survived the affair.

Against his considerable outgoings he now has a Euro MP's salary of £57,485, free travel and extensive perks. Many of his colleagues in Brussels use the £100,000 staff allowance to hire relatives.

But his sudden re-emergence onto the political scene has transformed his earning potential in other ways.

He is writing a book, which he maintains is not an autobiography.

Experts say it could be worth £200,000 - at least 10 times its value had he not been elected.

John Blake, publisher of model Jordan's autobiography, said: "The timing is terrific. He is clearly a popular figure among ordinary folk and he has a lot to talk about."

Kilroy-Silk's fee as an after-dinner speaker is also set to rise.

He has also been talking to industry figures about a new television venture.

And he still has his column in the Sunday Express, which landed him in trouble when he used it to condemn Arabs as "suicide bombers, limb amputators and womenrepressors".

The rant, which led to the BBC pulling the plug on his show in January, ranks as one of the most expensive gaffes in history.

Kilroy! had been running for 16 years and was produced by his own company in Teddington.

Former staff say the presenter was difficult to work for.

One female ex-researcher said: "He could be a bully. He would shout at people and call them idiots but at other times he was extremely flirtatious - it depended what mood he was in."

In the year to September 2002, the most recent for which accounts are available, Kilroy Television Company paid ?1.22 million in presenters and consultancy fees to Wordhouse Associates, another company owned by the couple. The previous year's payout was ?1.14 million.

At one time Kilroy-Silk earned thousands a year in extra income from Kilroy Executive Cars, which ferried guests to and from the studios.

He once admitted that one reason why he stuck with the show for so long was that "the money is irresistible".

Two weeks ago, asked whether he would now have to sell one of his homes, he said: "I wouldn't want to do that because they mean so much to the family.

"I would not want to be poor. I've been poor, very poor, and I would never want to go back."

He admitted that his TV job "gave me the means to lead my life" and added: "There's so many options now about where we live, how I earn a living, that it's a bit bewildering."

Kilroy-Silk's star quality helped UKIP to tweak Tory and Labour tails in last week's elections, to emerge as a powerful force in British politics.

Victory has given him a huge new public profile and earning prospects to match.

For the grammar school boy, who shared an outdoor toilet and washed in a tin bath in his childhood home, the good times are back.