Nobody has to watch Nigel Farage on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! Thousands of you, I bet, have already made the decision not to and will have no trouble sticking to it. But the damage has already been done. Because I know that Farage, whenever he appears on anything, manages to fun-wash himself in some obscure way – he is not, after all, that fun, even when he is not blowing his poundshop dog-whistles. And I know that I’m a Celebrity, more than any other reality TV show, has a redemptive effect on even the most sullied reputation.
I first noticed this with Farage years ago, appearing with him on a now defunct radio show, Pienaar’s Politics. It was 2010, and everyone was hail-fellowing Farage because he had just survived a plane crash. He had been flying around Oxfordshire, with the banner “Vote for your country: Vote Ukip”. Back then, Farage’s shtick was mainly maverick/troublemaker. He had been a prominent Eurosceptic for nearly 20 years, was a founder member of Ukip and was the party’s leader for a time, but in those days Ukip was still saying the quiet parts quite quietly: he’d make vague noises about where the real people of the UK stood on immigration, for instance, but he didn’t start talking about a fifth column of Islamic extremists until later.
