Farage on 4 - don't miss it
Monday, March 31, 2014 at 18:24 Looking forward to watching Nigel Farage: Who Are You? on TV tonight.
This is how Channel 4 describes the documentary, which starts at 7.30:
On a six-month journey full of incident, controversial filmmaker Martin Durkin gets to know Nigel Farage, the controversial UKIP leader who's turning British politics upside down.
You may remember that we invited Nigel to take part in Forest's Liberty Lounge event at The Comedy Store during the Conservative conference in Manchester last year.
I wrote about it here, Nigel Farage lights up Conservative conference fringe, and added this postscript:
Boris Johnson was the star of another not-so-fringe meeting at exactly the same time that Nigel Farage was appearing at The Comedy Store.
The BBC sent reporters to both events - see Tory conference: Boris Johnson v Nigel Farage.
The Forest/IEA meeting was also filmed by a TV crew making a documentary about Farage for Channel 4.
I would be very surprised if our event is featured in the Durkin's documentary, if only because it was the smallest of three meetings Nigel took part in that day, but there may be a shot of him drinking and smoking outside before his interview with the IEA's Mark Littlewood.
Either way, it should be an entertaining 60 minutes.
See also: Censorship of Forest Tory ad "heavy-handed to say the least" and Invitation to A Beer and a Fag with Farage and other events.
Update: An early scene did feature Farage at the Forest/IEA event 'A Beer and a Fag with Farage' at The Comedy Store in Manchester.
Sadly we weren't credited.
Reader Comments (6)
Just watched this it was great, for sure Ukip believe in choice. Whether you like Nigel Farage or not he stands for what he believe in.
He smoked most of the way through it and was then summed up as an ordinary bloke.
I'll bet that had the denormalisation snobs choking on their spring water.
The sneering left
Great television and credit to Channel 4 for not doing any hatchet job. However, it was spoiled by the sad bile filled Yasmin alibhai-brown, who just couldn’t come up with anything remotely positive to say, about Nigel Farage or UKIP. This deeply small minded woman, could only manage a constant stream of ugly sneering criticism and sarcasm. If anyone or any thing becomes a threat to any political status quo, then you are obliged to snipe and denigrate. Well tough – because the best is yet to come at the next election.
I found Nigel engaging and genial and who opened my eyes to the exponential growth of the EU, with its ever burgeoning ranks of technocrats, and bureaucrats who constantly invent new rules, regulations and legislation which plagues our country. The whole structure of the EU is a labyrinth of paper shuffling, which one day will collapse under its own weight of meaningless technocracy.
I just saw advertised today that there's going to be yet another "should we be in or out of the EU" debate, this time run by the BBC (Beeb 2, I think). Same format as the previous LBC-organised one - Clegg v Farage - but this time hosted by David Dimbleby in place of Nick Ferrari. Talk about copycats!
Maybe they are concerned that because Farage won the last debate they've got to re-run it with a fixed "Clegg/pro-EU" win, lest any of the hoi polloi get the inconvenient notion into their heads that lots of other people share their dislike of the whole EU situation and would like to see us rid of the whole set-up.
The phrase "damage limitation" springs to mind ...
They picked Yasmin because she is bitter and twisted. Makes Nigel appear even better.
Having now seen the programme I can now see why so many people are terrified of Farage and UKIP. If you wanted to design a political version of The Terminator to kill the political class, you'd want him to come from an ordinary background, be a bit of a rebel, have a substantial business career, possess the common touch and be a gifted exponent of ignored concerns. But we don't need to build one, fate has thrown up Farage at exactly the right moment.
No wonder the Alibhai-Brown woman is so hysterical. No wonder Midgley spits feebly in his review. For no one in the political class knows how to neutralise UKIP and the attempts of their surrogates in the Telegraph and the Mail to do so just infuriates their own readers and reinforces Farage as the outsider, which is what he wants to be.