To UKIP’s celebratory press conference, where almost everyone looks just this side of bonkers. It’s held in the smallest room for rent in Westminster — curtains closed to give it that murky underwater feel — and is crammed with men of a certain age wearing giant purple UKIP rosettes. It’s chaotic and crowded, full of TV cameras, wires, photographers, loud voices.
Loudest of all is Nigel Farage, UKIP’s leader, chortling, booming, dominating all with an XXL personality. “In 2004 we came third in the Euro elections and they said it was a fluke,” he crowed, Euro-tan glowing. “I’m very pleased to sit here and say that UKIP has come second! Of course this time we’ll be told it was a fluke again. Although Gary Player, the famous golfer, said, ‘It’s funny, the more I practise, the luckier I get!’ ” It’s hard to take UKIP seriously when you are this close to them. I think that, as a party, they should bulk-buy breath mints. As Hazel Blears (RIP) may have said: “UKIP if you want to . . .”
But as Nige, as I already think of him, points out, the truth is that more people are wanting to.
Nige tells us why it all went wrong in 2004 when Robert Kilroy-Silk, the deeply orange celebrity politician, was in the party. “Let’s be frank! We completely blew it in 2004! We blew it because we went into a period of total civil war!”
This time, though, it’s different. “I don’t see those sorts of splits coming. I don’t see anybody with an ego quite as big as that,” he said, snorting. “It wouldn’t be possible!” The room giggled as Nige said that only UKIP could take on the BNP.
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The place was full of unlikely types. Take Nikki Sinclaire, a very tall (reportedly 6ft 4in) lesbian who has just become a UKIP MEP. Well, I say to her, you’re on the gravy train now. “Yes, but I want to get off. I want to pull the cord. I’ve already started to campaign for my own redundancy!”
Then I meet Lord Dartmouth, hereditary peer and new MEP.
Dartmouth, I ask, like the place?
“Like the author!” cries the UKIP peer Lord Pearson of Rannoch.
The author?
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“Barbara Cartland!” cries Lord Pearson.
“She’s was my grandmother,” says Lord Dartmouth.
Then there’s David Campbell- Bannerman, MEP and distant relation of the former Liberal PM Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (is he the least famous of all PMs?). The family still has Sir Henry’s desk which, David reveals, has a drinks cabinet in it. Ah, drink! This has a certain resonance with UKIP for Nige admits to liking a drink or two. I catch him afterwards, immediately after his interview with Lauren Booth, Cherie Blair’s half-sister, who now works for the Iranian-owned Press TV. (Sometimes it really is very, very hard to keep up in Westminster.) Nige is smoking a thin cigar that looks dangerously like a cigarillo.
“Smoking!” I cry.
Nige says that in Brussels he flouts the smoking law. “In Europe, laws are merely advisory. You can’t tell the Greeks in the EU Parliament not to smoke! It just isn’t going to work.”
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So will he be celebrating with a drink or two? I say that I heard that two UKIP MEPs had to be dragged out of the pub for the press conference (it was at 11am).
“Just the one,” corrected a minder. “He was only halfway there.”
Nige puffed away. “I’ve got a couple of things to do first. But we will go for a couple. Definitely! And WHY NOT?”