The US "shock jock" banned from entering the UK said today that he would carry on with defamation proceedings against outgoing home secretary Jacqui Smith, saying he had never incited violence among his listeners.

Michael Savage, real name Michael Weiner, was included on a list of undesirables banned by the government from entering the UK last month due to "stirring up hatred and promoting their extreme views".

Savage said his "honour" was at stake over the "crazy" Home Office decision. "None of my words have ever led to violence for the simple reason that I do not call for violence, I do not provoke violence, and moreover, I want to say that provoking violence is illegal in the US as well," he told Victoria Derbyshire on BBC Radio 5 Live today.

"How in the world can she allege that my words have caused violence while I am still on the air all these 15 years?" he said.

The radio host, who said he was a longstanding Anglophile, announced last month that he was launching legal proceedings against the home secretary, who it emerged today is to stand down in a cabinet reshuffle. He was angry at his inclusion in the list, which also includes former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen Donald Black, Hamas MP Unis Al-Astal, Jewish extremist Mike Guzovsky and American anti-gay Baptist pastor Fred Waldron Phelps.

The Home Office described Savage, 67, as a "controversial daily radio host considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence".

A Home Office spokeswoman insisted that the decision to ban him was the right one. "The home secretary has made it clear that if such a case was brought that any legal proceedings would be robustly defended," she said.

Savage, a married father of two, hosts right-wing radio show The Savage Nation, one of the most popular talkshows in the US.

The London mayor, Boris Johnson, said last month the decision to ban Savage was "utterly demented".

"Has this stuff warped America, or deformed its political psyche?" Johnson wrote in his Daily Telegraph column.

"On the contrary, the Americans have just had the good sense to elect a supremely gifted and eloquent black man – when the prospect of a black British prime minister still seems some way off. What are we, some sort of kindergarten that needs to be protected against these dangerous American radio shows?"

Savage was described by Salon.com as giving voice "to the right wing's darkest fantasies". He once told Muslims to "take your religion and shove it up your behind".

He also said, of homosexuality: "The gay and lesbian mafia wants our children. If it can win their souls and their minds, it knows their bodies will follow.

"Of course, it wants to homosexualise the whole country, not just the children. This is all part of the war that is going on. Maybe you don't want to face up to it, but it's a very real war. It's being inflicted on the American people by the radical gay lobby, which is now everywhere."

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