Furious Philpott - jailed for killing six of his kids in a fire - leapt from his seat and lunged towards the former minister after she called him the benefit scrounger a 'coward'
ANN Widdecombe has revealed she believed child-killer Mick Philpott was about to attack her after she called him a "coward" while filming a TV documentary.
The former Tory minister thought "This is it!" when furious Philpott - jailed for killing six of his kids in a fire - leapt from his seat and lunged towards her.
Ms Widdecombe witnessed Philpott's volatile temper first hand when she stayed with him at his home for a TV documentary about benefit claimants in 2008.
The man labelled "Shameless Mick" had demanded the council provide him with a bigger house despite claiming £40,000 a year in benefits for his wife, mistress and their 11 children, who all lived under the same roof.
In one of several confrontations, Widdecombe called Philpott a "coward" when he said he would not speak to pensioners about his life on benefits.
Philpott leapt up from his seat and squared up to the former MP, who backed away.
Ms Widdecombe recalled: "He got very angry and there was a point when he moved suddenly and I really thought he was going to hit me.
"And I flinched back, and I thought: 'This is it'.
"I mean, I'd been slightly worried throughout the whole programme that he might actually get physically aggressive, but I really thought that was the moment.
"It didn't happen. He had control - he knew when to be careful. He knew the cameras were there."
The ex-MP and Strictly contestant recalled the terrifying incident in an interview for a new documentary called Faking It: Tears of a Crime.
Philpott was jailed for life in April 2013 after killing six of his children in a fire when a plot to frame his ex-lover went wrong.
His wife Mairead Philpott and family friend Paul Mosley were each jailed for 17 years. The trio had been convicted of six counts of manslaughter.
The six victims – Duwayne, 13, his sister Jade, ten, and brothers, John, nine, Jack, eight, Jesse, six and Jayden, five - perished as fire swept through their home in Allenton, Derby.
Lisa Willis, Philpott's live-in mistress, had left the family home with her four children a few months earlier, and a custody hearing over the children was scheduled to take place on the morning of the fire.
Mick Philpott hatched a plan with Mairead and Mosley to incriminate Lisa while posing as a hero who saved his children.
But the planned rescue went tragically wrong when he was beaten back the flames as the blaze - started with petrol poured through a letterbox - got out of control in seconds.
In the two-part series, experts in body language, linguistics and psychology analyse the words and actions of four high-profile criminals and reveal the telltale signs that prove their guilt.
They look at Philpott's behaviour in the extraordinary press conference when he wept over the deaths of his children.
One expert is known as The Watcher reads micro-facial expressions and body language to detect giveaway signs of deception.
Another is The Listener, a specialist in linguistics, who can detect manipulation and finally The Profiler a psychologist who explains warped behaviour.
Kerry Daynes, the forensic psychologist in the show, concludes of Mick Philpott: "He's manipulative, reckless, highly narcissistic, and arrogant."
A spokeswoman for the show said: "Unknowingly criminals offer clues to guilt and the experts decode the clues in the series.
"For example, the face has 43 muscles and is capable of 10,000 different expressions and if you learn to read the muscle movements and these conflict with the story the person is telling, you know they are lying.
"The muscles can't be suppressed and you can tell when someone is faking sadness. The pitch of the voice and the language they use or didn't use can also give the game away and be used to separate fact from fiction."
'Faking It: Tears of a Crime' airs over two episodes on Investigation Discovery at 10pm on January 6 and January 13.
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