According to my research, the eggs of the charmingly named California least tern (Sternula antillarum browni) have the thinnest-known shell among the fauna of the world. At around 0.14mm, it represents an almost unimaginably brittle and vulnerable carapace for the bird’s offspring during their approximately three-week-long incubation. However, the little sea bird, endangered species as it is, has nothing on Nigel Farage’s ego, which is so fragile that it only takes a few gentle prods from an interviewer to see it shatter all over the place in an explosion of irritability.
My goodness, he is thin-skinned when anyone has the temerity to ask him about his financial affairs and personal conduct. It is something he has in common with his friend and inspiration, Donald Trump. I refer, of course – and here I have to choose my words carefully – to Farage’s home in his Clacton constituency and his response when, in particular, Laura Kuenssberg and Beth Rigby made the most gentle and respectful of enquiries about it. Rigby, indeed, was greeted with a display of indignity not witnessed since the heyday of Dame Edith Evans.
