Nigel Farage loses his cool and launches into anti-BBC rant after query about racism
Nigel Farage demanded an apology for ‘virtually everything’ the BBC did in the 1970s and 80s – the time when former classmates claimed he made racist and antisemitic remarks at Dulwich College
Nigel Farage lost his cool with a BBC reporter after being asked about allegations of racism by former classmates.
In a furious rant the Reform UK leader demanded an apology for offensive BBC programmes in the 1970s and 80s – the time the claims against him go back to. Mr Farage flew into a rage after being asked whether his deputy, Richard Tice, was wrong to say racism allegations against him were lies.
Mr Farage said: “Let me say this to you – the double standards and hypocrisy of the BBC are absolutely astonishing. At the time I was alleged to have made these remarks one of your most popular weekly shows was the Black and White Minstrels.
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“The BBC were very happy to use blackface. Oh, and not just in the Black and White Minstrels. You did it in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum as well. And what about Alf Garnett (a character in BBC sitcom Till Death Us Do Part and follow-up In Sickness & In Health)?”
Garnett used a number of racial slurs in the shows, which ran from 1965 to 1975 and 1985 to 1992. Mr Farage went on to point to homophobia on comedy programmes at the time, before stating: “Oh, and what about Bernard Manning? Perfectly happy at exactly the same time for Bernard Manning to appear on prime time national BBC comedy telling jokes, for which these days you’ll probably get a knock at the door from our thought place and perhaps get a 31 month prison sentence.
“I cannot put up with the double standards of the BBC about what I’m alleged to have said 49 years ago, and what you were putting out on mainstream content. So I want an apology from the BBC for virtually everything you did throughout the 1970s and 80s.”
He said it was “despicable” that Mr Tice had earlier been asked about “the leader of Reform’s relationship with Hitler”. Mr Tice dismissed the allegations against his leader as “made-up twaddle”.
Following the spectable, a Tory Party spokesman said: “Nigel Farage just called a press conference and used it to rant at journalists over historic allegations of racism and antisemitism – allegations he has just admitted are true.
“Farage is too busy furiously defending himself to defend democracy from the Labour Party’s elections delays. Reform’s one man band is in chaos once again.”
The Deputy Leader of Reform UK dismissed the claims from a director whose family fled the Nazis, and suggested he had a “political axe to grind” and didn’t want Mr Farage to be PM. More than a dozen former classmates from Mr Farage’s time at Dulwich College, in south London, alleged that Mr Farage made pro-Hitler comments, joked about gas chambers, and put someone in detention for the colour of their skin.
In his dramatic press conference Mr Farage said the framing of the question to Mr Tice was “digusting beyond belief”. He read out a letter he said he’d received from a Jewish former pupil at Dulwich College. He wrote: “While there was plenty of macho tongue in cheek schoolboy banter, it was humor. And yes, sometimes it was offensive – rather like most of the BBC’s output – but never with malice.
“I never heard him racially abuse anyone. If he had, he would have been reported and punished. He wasn’t.”
Mr Farage has dismissed the claims, from decades ago – and insisted he would never racially abuse people in a “hurtful or insulting way”. Reform UK has categorically denied the claims and claimed the allegations are part of a smear campaign against the party leader.
This includes claims from award winning director and producer Peter Ettedgui, who was 13 at the time, who told The Guardian that the Reform leader would tell him “Hitler was right”, or “Gas them” before adding a hiss to replicate the sound of the gas chambers.
In a car crash interview, Mr Tice was asked if he thought saying to a Jewish person ‘Hitler was right’ is direct racial abuse.
He said: “Yes I do, and I can’t believe anybody would have said that. This is all made up twaddle by people who don’t want Nigel to be Prime Minister of this country. Funny enough they didn’t remember this three years ago, six years ago”.
Host Emma Barnett pointed out they did, with Mr Ettedgui telling a journalist about it years ago. ”
Mr Tice continued: “This is made up nonsense by someone who’s got a politically biased motive. And let me tell you, no one has stood up against antisemitism more than Nigel and I, we were the ones who immediately after October 7th said we were very worried about the protests.
“I think this is made up twaddle by a whole bunch of people, I think these people have a political axe to grind, and every week the voters are going out in by-elections and they’re voting for Reform because they’re not buying into this left-wing anti-Nigel narrative”
Responding, Labour peer Lord Katz, the former chair of Jewish Labour, said: “Reform dep leader Richard Tice just claimed no one has done more than Nigel Farage to tackle antisemitism, in the same breath rubbishing claims of antisemitism vs Farage from a Jewish man as twaddle. Just shameful.”
