The American “shock jock” radio host Michael Savage, who was included on a Home Office list of 16 people banned from entering the country, last night urged his listeners to boycott Britain.

He told his audience that Americans should not travel to Britain or buy British goods, and delivered a personal message to Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, who made the decision to include him on the list of unwanted foreigners: “Unless you remove my name forthwith, unless you admit you made a mistake, I will bring a major libel suit against you personally and I will win.”

Mr Savage opened fire on the Home Secretary on the conservative news website WorldNetDaily , where he said that his message to her and the British people was: “Shame on you. Shame that you’ve fallen to such a low level.”

“It’s interesting to me that here I am, a talk show host who does not advocate violence, who advocates patriotic traditional values — borders, language, culture — who is now on a list banned in England.

“What does that say about the Government of England? It says more about them than it says about me.” Mr Savage, 67, said that he had no plans to travel to Britain, which he last visited more than 20 years ago, and joked to the San Francisco Chronicle: “My first thought was, damn, there goes the summer trip where I planned to have my dental work done. My second thought was, darn, there goes my visit to the restaurants of England for their great cuisine.”

Yesterday the Home Office faced further criticism as it emerged that most of the 15 other people on the list had not attempted to visit Britain either.

Appearing alongside Mr Savage on the list are Yunis al-Astal, the Hamas MP, and the Jewish extremist Mike Guzovsky, two leaders of a violent Russian skinhead gang, the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard Stephen “Don” Black and the neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe.

Two of them are serving 20-year jail sentences in Russia, and a Home Office spokesman admitted that people placed on the list had not necessarily intended or sought to come to Britain. He said that Ms Smith placed people on the list after receiving submissions from officials.

Last night, in an apparent attempt to counter Mr Savage’s criticism, one of Mrs Smith’s aides released a series of quotes from the DJ as proof of his history of making “outrageous and deeply offensive remarks”.

Listed among Mr Savage’s statements was the view that “children’s minds are being raped by the homosexual mafia”, and he told listeners that they faced a choice with regard to Muslims as to whether “we disappear or we die. Or would you rather they (Muslims) disappear and they die?”

Mark Stephens, of the London law firm Finers Stephens Innocent, said: “He would seem to have a very good case. The people on the list who have been banned are supposed to be advocating extreme violence and so to put him into that category is clearly defamatory.”

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