“I’m sorry if they were offended, but I’m not repentant for where I told the truth. If I am to be vilified for telling the truth, then there is something very seriously wrong,” he told Trevor McDonald in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ITV1.

“I know that all Arabs are not suicide bombers or limb amputators. I know many of them are extremely urbane, intelligent, sophisticated and civilised people.”

The presenter claimed that the row that had prompted the BBC to take his chat show off the air had been largely manufactured by people with “an axe to grind” against him.

He denied that his comments were racist or breached any laws. “It is all very silly, a storm in a teacup. You say these kind of things, but you haven’t broken any law,” Mr Kilroy-Silk said.

Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality, urged the presenter yesterday to acknowledge what he said was “wrong, incorrect and very offensive. Robert is now posing as a kind of 24-carat martyr. Trying to defend the indefensible is throwing him into disrepute.

“If we allow it, most Muslims both here and abroad will think everything the extremists say about the British — that they are against Arabs — is true because they allow this kind of thing to be said about us,” he told Sky News.

“You can’t go around saying to Muslims, ‘We want you to be British, we want you to be part of the society’, then at the same time allow people to say anything they like about Arabs and Muslims.”

Mr Kilroy-Silk said on Friday that he greatly regretted the “offence caused” by the Sunday Express article, which contained some “obvious factual errors”, but he did not apologise for the comments.

Mr Phillips called on the former Labour MP to “learn something about Muslims and Arabs” and use some of his “vast earnings” to support a Muslim charity. “Then I would say he has been properly contrite,” he said.

The BBC said that it had no comment to make until an investigation had been completed. That is being conducted by Jana Bennett, the head of television, and Alison Sharman, controller of daytime television.

The BBC said last week that it “strongly disassociates itself” from Mr Kilroy-Silk’s views and it emphasised that they did not reflect those of the corporation.

The 61-year-old presenter said yesterday that he was “very disappointed” that the BBC had not supported him and had decided to take his show off air indefinitely. He understood the BBC’s need to distance itself from his column, but claimed: “My impartiality on the programme has never been a problem.”

Support for Mr Kilroy-Silk has come from some Conservatives, including Edwina Currie, also a former MP turned broadcaster. She said that he had been “very unlucky” and called for his show to be put back on the air. “I think he raises important issues,” she said.

Jonathan Aitken, another former Tory MP, said there had been an overreaction to the remarks, which were “a normal bit of froth and bubble of free speech, nothing more, nothing less”.

The CRE has complained to the Metropolitan Police about the article. A spokesman said that the matter would be considered by the Commissioner.

Mr Kilroy-Silk was last year nominated as Bigot of the Year by the charity Mind for the way that mental health issues were portrayed on his show.

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