Michael Buerk 'regrets not pushing Jimmy Savile off a boat'

Michael Buerk says he had the opportunity to push Jimmy Savile over the railings of the QE2. Credit: ITV / PA

Michael Buerk says one of his biggest regrets in life is not killing Jimmy Savile when he had the chance.

The former newsreader, 68, was talking to fellow contestants on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here when he made the revelations.

Rapper Tinchy Stryder initiated a discussion about regrets when Buerk said he wished he had been "old enough to have a grown up conversation" with his mother before she died.

But just as the exchange was coming to an end, the journalist said he had thought of another point to make.

Buerk was sat at a campfire as he made the comments. Credit: ITV

"I remember standing at the rail of the QE2 next to Jimmy Savile, whom I personally disliked really intensely, before everyone else did," Buerk said, as other celebrities laughed at the comments.

"My biggest regret is not tipping him over the rail when I had the chance."

Jimmy Savile died aged 84 in 2011, a year before ITV broadcast a documentary which made public a string of allegations of sexual abuse and paedophilia.

Police now believe Savile had hundreds of victims, with several under the age of 10 at the time.