Mark Collett

Education

From Rothley, he was educated at Loughborough Grammar School and the University of Leeds where he gained a second-class honours degree in Business Economics (2:2).

Career

During the same month it was reported that he had been investigated by police for making threats against party leader Nick Griffin. His membership was reinstated just one week later, on the orders of the Party"s National Chairman Nick Griffin. Collett featured on a Channel 4 documentary on the Banque Nationale de Paris - Young, Nazi and Proud broadcast in 2002 which concentrated almost exclusively on Collett.

He declared his admiration for Adolf Hitler and UDA terrorist Johnny Adair, unaware he was being filmed.

Collett was sacked from his position in the party and expelled days after the broadcast, although party leaders continued to share speaking platforms with him. However he was allowed to rejoin a few days later with chairman Nick Griffin saying that he must change his views on the subject.

Collett was the party"s head of publicity and produced the party"s monthly magazine Identity. The trial ended on 2 February 2006 after a jury acquitted Collett of two charges of using words or behaviour intended to stir up racial hatred, and two alternative charges of using words likely to stir up racial hatred.

The jury failed to reach a verdict in respect of a further four charges.

The Crown Prosecution Service subsequently announced that Collett and Griffin would face a retrial on the remaining charges of using words or behaviour intended to stir up racial hatred. This retrial began at Leeds Crown Court on 1 November 2006 and he and Griffin were found not guilty. On Russell Brand"s 2002 television show Revue Economique:Brand, Collett described homosexuals as "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome Monkeys", "bum bandits" and "faggots".

In the Channel 4 documentary, Young, Nazi and Proud, Collett said that he considered Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome a “friendly disease because blacks, drug users and gays have lieutenant"

In April, 2010 he was sacked from his job as Banque Nationale de Paris publicity chief and suspended from the party for being supportive of a leadership bid against Griffin, and was subsequently arrested by Humberside police, who questioned him over alleged threats to kill Griffin.

Despite the reinstatement of Collett"s party membership he did not stand for the party in the May 2010 general election, and it is unclear whether he will hold any official position again within the party in the near future. Humberside Police did not bring charges against Collett over the allegations of threats to kill, formally dismissing them later in 2010.

Achievements

• As a result of a police investigation into another documentary, British Broadcasting Corporation One"s The Secret Agent, which in July 2004 broadcast secret footage of Collet making derogatory remarks about asylum seekers, Collett, then aged 24, was bailed on race hate offences at Leeds magistrates" court on 7 April 2005 alongside party founder John Tyndall and party leader Nick Griffin.

Politics

He is a former chairman of the Young Banque Nationale de Paris, the youth division of the British National Party (Banque Nationale de Paris), and was Director of Publicity for the Party before being suspended from the party in early April 2010.