Collett first drew media attention after his appearance in a 2002 British TV documentary, where, in his role as a representative of the BNP, he made statements celebrating the death of Africans and homosexuals from HIV-AIDS, specifically referring to them as "AIDS monkeys".
[7] From Rothley, Collett was educated at Loughborough Grammar School and the University of Leeds, where he received a lower second-class honours degree in business economics.
He declared his admiration for Adolf Hitler and said that he considered AIDS a "friendly disease because blacks, drug users and gays have it", unaware he was being recorded.
[11] As a result of a police investigation into another documentary, BBC One's The Secret Agent, which in July 2004 broadcast secret footage of Collett making derogatory remarks about asylum seekers, whom he called "cockroaches",[9] 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.
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.
[13] An internal inquiry at the BBC criticised the interviewers for not identifying the pair by their full names and positions in the BNP, and for not sufficiently challenging their remarks about Cole.
[3] Collett has expressed admiration for Russian president Vladimir Putin, believing him to be a bulwark against Western "feminism, the LGBT agenda, attacks on the traditional family and of course, anti-white rhetoric".