Mick Philpott appeared on ITV's The Jeremy Kyle Show in 2007, where he bragged about having 15 kids with 5 different women. He went on to kill six of them after setting his own home on fire in a twisted plot to rid himself of an ex (who was shacked up with him and his wife).
One of my favourite things about the British press is their ability to give people the perfect nickname... and calling Mick Philpott 'Shameless Mick' was bang on the money.
He was jailed for life in 2012 after a house fire that he and wife Mairead purposefully started to frame his ex-lover in a bid to get custody of their kids ended up killing five of their own, and one of their half-siblings.
Jade Philpott, ten, and brothers Duwayne, 13, John, nine, Jack, eight, Jesse, six and Jayden, five, all lost their lives in the twisted plot - a complicated and tragic situation typical of 'Shameless Mick'.
At the time he pretended he had no idea who had started the petrol-fuelled blaze, and appeared on national TV with his weeping wife - although it roused suspicions as he failed to ask for any information on the crime, just thanked different emergency services like he was at the Oscars.
Normally ugly men have to wait until they 'get famous' before becoming a ladies' man, but for Mick Philpott it was the total opposite.
With his bald shiny head and yellow handlebar moustache, he looked like Hulk Hogan without the bandana (or teeth, muscles, or tan), but somehow he ended up being Derby's top shagger, producing SEVENTEEN children with five different women.
Two of the women, Mairead and Lisa, lived with him in a 'throuple' set-up. But how did they get a moment's privacy with all those kids running around and just a three bed house for all of them?
Ever resourceful, Mick set up shop in a caravan outside their house on 18 Victoria Terrace, where he would entertain his "wives" on a nightly rotation.
If that's not grim enough, 'mistress' Lisa, who he considered his second wife was a bridesmaid when he married Mairead, and she was seven months pregnant at the time. There were only two years between the two women, with Mairead just 19 when she got together with Mick - and Lisa not legally old enough to drink when he brought her in to the mix.
But there was one thing that Mick loved more than younger women - fame. And he didn't care how he got it. He first came to the public's attention when he went to his local ITV News to complain that Derby Council wouldn't give him and his growing brood a bigger house. It soon emerged he was getting £25,000 a YEAR in benefits, and he was soon crowned "Britain's Biggest Scrounger".
Like a shark smelling blood, it wasn't long until Jeremy Kyle had booked him to appear on the show. The 2007 episode was a classic showdown with Mick snapping back at all of Jezza's snarled insults of being a feckless dad, drain on the state and needing to learn to "put something on the end of it!"
After he appeared on national TV, one of his friends explained how he now saw himself as a celebrity. They told the Daily Mail: "He thought he was a celebrity after the Kyle show. It went to his head. He reckoned that he’d make a fortune selling magazine rights to his vasectomy. He claimed: 'Mick Philpott’s seed is too good to waste'."
Hopefully Shameless Mick doesn't get anyone else pregnant from inside the walls of HMP Wakefield. VOM.
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