Speaker 1:
it’s Absolute Radio and our guest tonight, Nigel Farage. Hello.
Nigel Farage:
Good evening.
Speaker 1:
Not a hair out of place.
Nigel Farage:
No. Sadly they’ve all gone gray but they’re all still there.
Speaker 1:
You know, there was an errant hair during the debates last night people were tweeting about.
Nigel Farage:
Oh really?
Speaker 1:
Yeah. You strike me as somebody who, when you were going off to school in the morning, maybe your mum needed to dab a bit of jam off you face and make sure you’re tucked in.
Nigel Farage:
Well, wipe the toothpaste off the tie, normally.
Speaker 1:
I’m going to play a piece of music to introduce this section of the interview. Here it is.
Chumbawamba:
He drinks the whiskey drink. He drinks the vodka drink. He drinks the lager drink. He drinks the cider drink. He sings the songs …
Speaker 1:
Now, I’m guessing that you’re not particularly familiar with the works of Chumbawamba.
Nigel Farage:
I … do you know, once, there was a UKIP party conference, and as I walked onto the stage, they played a piece of Chumbawamba, and the band objected violently to it.
Speaker 1:
Oh no, they’re going to object to that, as well.
Nigel Farage:
Oh, well, there we are.
Speaker 1:
You know, I was just thinking of the lager drink, whiskey drink, because this is an unusual thing to not see you with a pint in the hand.
Nigel Farage:
Well, this is just ridiculous. I go up … do you know what? I get up fairly early in the morning, 5:00 normally, 5:30. I work bloody hard until about-
Speaker 1:
You deserve it.
Nigel Farage:
Until about 1:00, and I reckon I deserve a sherbet.
Speaker 1:
But you’re also electioneering at the moment. You’re campaigning. You’ve got to keep healthy. We’ve got you a drink, but we’ve got no alcohol for Nigel.
Nigel Farage:
Oh dear, how vague.
Speaker 1:
Garrett, can you bring me some drinks over? I think you’re going to like this. This is what they’re drinking these days.
Nigel Farage:
This looks ghastly, I have to say.
Speaker 1:
This is kale, wheat grass, celery, and spinach.
Nigel Farage:
God, I’ll be joining the Green Party.
Speaker 1:
Cheers!
Nigel Farage:
Cheers!
Nigel Farage:
I’ve got to tell you. That is vile. Can you find a bottle of whiskey there somewhere, please? To wash away the taste. Goodness gracious.
Speaker 1:
So, your local landlord must love you. Are you on free drinks at that pub the whole time now?
Nigel Farage:
No, but I do … the funny thing is, I stop off in pubs all over the country, and pop in for what I call a pit stop. And one of the delights of this job is the number of people that buy me drinks. It’s fantastic. I had one the other day. I’m not sure [inaudible 00:02:11] earlier, so I’m not. But I stopped at a pub in Elton the other night. I walked in, and a little fellow got up. He’d gone on a bit, and he said, “Mr. Farage, I’ll buy you that drink.” I said, “well, that’s very sweet of you. Thank you.” Have a pint of that IPA, whatever, and I said, “So, what makes you want to do that?” He says, “Because you’re the dog’s bollocks.” I just thought that was rather lovely.
Nigel Farage:
No, it’s … I like to have a pint at lunchtime. I see nothing wrong with it, but it’s portrayed as if I’d spent the whole day there.
Speaker 1:
But this is an interesting question, because like political parties, you have to maximize your exposure in the media. It’s not just about what you say, it’s how you come across. So if we see David Cameron talking about something, he’s got a hard hat on to prove that he’s getting Britain back to work. If we see Ed Miliband talking about something, he’s in a hospital ward. If we see Nick Clegg, he’s got people around him to prove that people still like him. And I’m interested in when was the decision? Oh, people are really clocking onto Nigel as a man of the people. When did you decide to start doing the interviews in pubs?
Nigel Farage:
No, no, you’ve missed all of it. You’ve missed all of it. There is no planning. There is no PR. There is no hype. This is me.
Speaker 1:
Come on, they’re not just coming and finding you in the pub there. [crosstalk 00:03:17]
Nigel Farage:
Oh, they do. They do.
Speaker 1:
… and say we want an interview. You say alright, come to the [Vitlay’s 00:03:20] Arms.
Nigel Farage:
No, really, the way that it started was, with some of the newspapers, knowing the haunts that I would frequent at lunchtime, getting the photographers there. There was nothing invented about this. This is me. Take it or leave it.
Speaker 1:
And you’re not suggesting these locations when they ask for an interview.
Nigel Farage:
No, they generally come and chase me down. But, as I say, I enjoy a couple of drinks. There’s nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 1:
And when you started off in the London Metals Exchange, you’ve said that you drunk continuously sometimes. If it was a quiet week or a quiet day, you’d just be down in the pub. Is that why you learned how to handle it?
Nigel Farage:
I don’t want to glorify it. And I wouldn’t want my children spending their 20s as I did, because it’s wrong. But, slight confession, it was great fun. And-
Speaker 1:
And you talk about playing practical jokes on each other. What would that be like back then?
Nigel Farage:
It was a different world then. It was a different world. There was no political correctness. A lot of it, I suppose these days, might be construed at being cruel or bullying, but yeah, it was all this sort of Super Glue on the handsets, and confetti in the umbrellas, and all very childish.
Speaker 1:
And this doesn’t sound like Wolf of Wall Street.
Nigel Farage:
No, it wasn’t, and it’s a long, long way away from that. I mean, this was the old London, and it was a bit like a big boys’ club, really. And it’s changed, and it’s become international, become very successful. People make great, I mean huge sums of money. But the trouble is now … I look at what I used to do, interacting with people in a dealing room-
Speaker 1:
And you were on the floor doing all the shouting, right?
Nigel Farage:
I was on the floor, but in the office, too, and screaming and shouting at each other, and so a very high energy. And you go into a modern day city dealing room now, and there are people sitting at desks, surrounded by six screens, who don’t talk to anybody, and send emails to people sitting six feet away from them. And it’s absolutely silent, and it’s humorless, and the owe more money, and you know what? I hate it.
Speaker 1:
You’ve got an interesting story, actually, because with the Global Financial Crisis, a lot of people said the banks were under-regulated. You actually think over-regulating gave people a false sense of security, and if the market had been left, it would have sorted itself out.
Nigel Farage:
We had shed-loads of regulation on-
Speaker 1:
There was too much regulation.
Nigel Farage:
Masses of it, thousands of pages of it. But what we did was make a fundamental mistake. The Bank of England had regulated UK banking since 1694. It had generally done a pretty good job. We took away the Bank’s role in the late 1990s, gave it to a new regulator that was generally filled up with failures. They hadn’t made it in their own lives.
Speaker 1:
You’re very cruel about these people.
Nigel Farage:
I can’t bear them. And they fail completely. and we’ve replaced expertise, knowledge, and that sort of personal relationship approach to managing our banking to a tick-box culture, and it failed completely. And okay, it failed in America too, and it failed in some European countries. But interestingly, Australia and Canada, both of whom have got very big banking sectors didn’t need a penny piece of bailout money, because they kept to the good rules.
Speaker 1:
And that’s why we’ve got a Bank of England general governor from Canada, wasn’t it?
Nigel Farage:
Well, we have got, and he’s a very fine fellow, too. But still, he hasn’t … I would actually give him far more power than he’s got.
Speaker 1:
So I’m not huge on politics. I should watch more, I should read more. But even I know that the big UKIP policy is you want to get Great Britain out of the Eurovision.
Nigel Farage:
I think the Eurovision Song Contest has been biased for so many years now. Terry Wogan got it right. The time has come to go.
Speaker 1:
Well, we have questions from Eurovision entrants from years gone by. Let’s see the first one.
Lithuania:
Hello, Mr. Farage. Lithuania calling, and dancer of LT90. You may remember our song. We are the winners of Eurovision in 2006.
Speaker 1:
Do you remember Lithuania 2006?
Nigel Farage:
I don’t. I have to think.
Speaker 1:
Well, let’s hear his question.
Nigel Farage:
I bet it was really good.
Lithuania:
My question for Mr. Farage is, do you prefer the music of ABBA, Aha!, or Roxette when you are singing karaoke?
Speaker 1:
So when you’re singing karaoke, I mean, is it ABBA, is it Roxette? What are you singing there, Nigel?
Nigel Farage:
Well, to be absolutely honest, in the state I get to karaoke, I wouldn’t remember. But isn’t it funny how ABBA, ABBA … my young kids think ABBA is cool, because of the film and everything else.
Speaker 1:
Yeah yeah, it’s with the … well actually, our next question is from Sweden. Let’s have a listen.
Richard Herrey:
Hello, this is Sweden calling. My name is Richard Herrey, and together with my two brothers, I represented Sweden in 1984, and won the Eurovision Song Contest.
Speaker 1:
“Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley” was their song. Do you remember that one?
Nigel Farage:
It was a source of, vaguely.
Speaker 1:
I think in the ’80s, you don’t remember much.
Nigel Farage:
Well, it was …
Speaker 1:
Let’s hear his question.
Richard Herrey:
My question for Mr. Farage is, do you enjoy riding the bicycle? And if so, do you always wear a helmet?
Nigel Farage:
I don’t enjoy riding bicycles. I don’t think our roads are suited for bicycles. But on the odd occasion when I do ride a bicycle, I don’t wear a helmet.
Speaker 1:
Hey, what do you think of this idea, appointing Jeremy Clarkson transport minister?
Nigel Farage:
Well, that’s actually marvelous. I do think the motorway speed limit’s far too low, and Jeremy would certainly sort that out.
Speaker 1:
Right, let’s have another question.
Jay Aston:
Hi, my name’s Jay Aston. I’m an original former member of Bucks Fizz. We won Eurovision in 1981 with the song called “Making Your Mind Up.”
Speaker 1:
Do you remember that? Do you remember them ripping their skirts off?
Nigel Farage:
Yeah, yeah, not quite. They didn’t take everything off. Did they?
Speaker 1:
Let’s have Jay’s question.
Jay Aston:
I’d like to ask Mr. Farage, has he made his mind up about the future of Eurovision for the UK if he was to get into power?
Speaker 1:
I mean, it’s costly, it’s undemocratic.
Nigel Farage:
I’m very, very deeply concerned about it. I think it represents all the worst there is about the European Union.
Speaker 1:
What if they introduced an Australian point style system instead of the new points?
Nigel Farage:
Well, that would be … no, that would be alright. But you watch it every year, and you just see the huge bias against us. The whole odds are stacked against us, and it’s time we withdrew.
Speaker 1:
So this year, you can’t support the UK. What country would you like to see win Eurovision?
Nigel Farage:
The Greeks, because they always had a rotten time. They need a bit of good fortune.
Speaker 1:
This is Absolute Radio. Nigel Farage is our guest today. I’m going to start the second part of the interview with what I believe to be your favorite song.
Speaker 7:
Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do …
Nigel Farage:
[inaudible 00:09:47]
Speaker 1:
You loathe this song above all others.
Nigel Farage:
It’s terrible, isn’t it?
Speaker 1:
You call it … why you don’t like it? You call it the girdle-girdle song.
Nigel Farage:
Yeah. I mean, it just … it’s an idealism. It doesn’t-
Speaker 1:
But a lot of people when they hear that song, they think it’s a nice idea, but it’d never work. You don’t even think it’s a nice idea.
Nigel Farage:
Well, i think it’s not a nice idea, because it doesn’t work. It basically, when … that song outlines communism, doesn’t it? This wonderful idea of 100 years ago, which finished up killing tens of millions of people.
Speaker 1:
I think he was probably going more for utopia than the Soviet Union.
Nigel Farage:
Well, so were the Communists.
Speaker 1:
Aren’t we all? Aren’t we all? Isn’t everyone going for a utopia?
Nigel Farage:
I have to confess, I’m not a great John Lennon fan.
Speaker 1:
You were born in 1964. Did the songs … that would make you 13 years old when punk rock came along.
Nigel Farage:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
No interest in punk?
Nigel Farage:
I thought it was hilarious. I loved it.
Speaker 1:
Yeah?
Nigel Farage:
Oh, I loved it.
Speaker 1:
You were into the Clash and-
Nigel Farage:
I thought the whole stranglers walking on the beaches, and I thought the whole sort of antiestablishmentism … and I think the Sex Pistols … I mean, the night of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, the barge down the Thames, “God Save The Queen” … I laughed like a drained man.
Speaker 1:
You never went as far as the hair.
Nigel Farage:
There is a picture on the internet of me with a Mahican. And I have to say it’s not true. It has been concocted. No, I thought punk was very, very funny, and I still do.
Speaker 1:
So, when you were at school, it seemed to me that you were at one of these schools where there’s lots of clubs, and you never joined a club. You would go and learn about this, learn about a bit about this, learn about this. And a big change for you came when you had two speakers at your school. One was Enoch Powell. The other was Keith Joseph, who was a big architect of Thatcherism. And at which point, at the age of 14, you joined the Conservatives.
Nigel Farage:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Did your parents worry about you? 14, that’s not very rebellious, joining a political party.
Nigel Farage:
Well, it was rebellious in a funny sort of way, because actually, what Joseph represented was a political revolution. It was completely overturning everything we’d done for 25 years. And I remember when Joseph, when Keith Joseph came to the school, people standing up, and the whole screaming abuse, heckling. He was considered to be a terrible man, and I learned from that that if you challenge authority, if you take on the status quo, even whether you’re right, they’ll always be abusive about you, and I had to sort of bear a bit of that in mind in the last couple of years.
Speaker 1:
I’ve got some facts about you that people might not know.
Nigel Farage:
Oh dear.
Speaker 1:
You were once a Green voter.
Nigel Farage:
I was. It’s a terrible confession. I’d better carry on with this drink [crosstalk 00:12:13]
Speaker 1:
Have you talked in the light of that? Have you talked about the forming of the alliance with Natalie Bennett?
Nigel Farage:
Well, I mean, no, I did have counseling afterwards, obviously. I voted Green in 1989. Jonathon Porritt ran the party. Very sensible, very, very good guy. I do believe in conservation. And at the time, the Greens were a sensible party who thought that the European project would lead us into the hands of big business. As it has.
Speaker 1:
You once had a night out with Screaming Lord Sutch.
Nigel Farage:
Oh yeah. My first ever election, and it was 1994. UKIP was a brand-new party. I was the first-ever candidate. It was the the easterly bi-election in 1994, and I turned up at the whole, for the count, and met Screaming Lord Sutch. He said, “Oh hi, Nige. Alright mate.” He said, “I’ll tell you what. The rest of this lot are a bunch of bleep-bleep-bleep. Why don’t we go down the pub for a bit?” So we did.
Speaker 1:
And it was a good laugh on it right now?
Nigel Farage:
And we had a riot of a time. And I can tell you, that by a clear and crashing majority of 162 votes, I beat him and didn’t come last.
Speaker 1:
Congratulations.
Nigel Farage:
Thank you.
Speaker 1:
You owe your life to Adolph Hitler.
Nigel Farage:
Do I?
Speaker 1:
Well, you write so in your biography.
Nigel Farage:
Yeah, but I don’t remember that.
Speaker 1:
So this is about the car accident you were in when you were young, and you were hit by a Volkswagen Beetle, which of course was Hitler’s idea.
Nigel Farage:
I was.
Speaker 1:
And you think that if it had not been a Beetle, it might have finished you off.
Nigel Farage:
Well, the point was the bumpers are quite low on Beetles, so you can see where I was smashed up.
Speaker 1:
Ooh.
Nigel Farage:
But had it been-
Speaker 1:
You need to see some sun.
Nigel Farage:
Had it been … I do. Had it been a car with high bull pads, I might not be here.
Speaker 1:
Do you think when you had that, you had that plane crash, you had testicular cancer-
Nigel Farage:
I did, yeah.
Speaker 1:
Do you ever think Someone up there hates you?
Nigel Farage:
Well, no. I take the opposite view. I think to have survived all of these things is absolutely amazing. So, I owe it to myself to enjoy life.
Speaker 1:
Let me talk about something … now, you’ve been under, for many years, a lot of scrutiny about racism amongst your supporters. You’ve been very vigilant. When that has reared its head, you’ve dealt with it. You, I think more than any politician I’ve ever heard, has spent time telling us that you’re not racist. Does it keep you awake at night thinking, “What are these people hearing?” When racist people are joining your party or supporting your party, are you thinking to yourself, “What am I saying? Am I saying anything?” Do you have long, dark nights of the soul on that?
Nigel Farage:
No, I think it’s about portrayal. I mean, look, we are challenging the establishment. Just as Keith Joseph took abuse when I saw him all those years ago, we’re challenging the establishment. But we’re trying to take their jobs from them. And they are fighting back. And so, they find one person that says something horrible, and it gets blown up out of all proportion.
Speaker 1:
Quick thing on policy. You talk about renegotiating the Barnett formula. You say that Scotland’s getting too good a deal. Nicholas Sturgeon says that per head, Scotland’s actually paying more than it should. Are you worried that if it came to an EU referendum, there might be a schism in the UK as a result of that?
Nigel Farage:
It’s possible, but unlikely. Actually-
Speaker 1:
Because there’s a lot of support for the UE in Scotland, though.
Nigel Farage:
No, there isn’t actually. Scotland is marginally less eurosceptic than England. The differences between Scottish opinion and English opinion are not as wide as Nicholas Sturgeon would have you believe.
Speaker 1:
And does the same apply in Northern Ireland? Because obviously, there’s a lot of power sharing with institutions over there.
Nigel Farage:
Northern Ireland is so eurosceptic that I would be considered to be a lily-livered liberal when discussing Europe. Sinn Féin are against it. The DUP are against it. They’re all against it.
Speaker 1:
Alright, Nigel, we should let you go. Time’s up. Thank you for coming and talking to us.
Nigel Farage:
Thank you very much.