What's the truth? Twenty people say Farage has a racist past. He denies it

Nigel Farage has denied, through a spokesperson, that he ever said anything racist or antisemitic when he was a teenager. The Guardian has spoken to 20 of the Reform UK leader's contemporaries while at Dulwich college in southeast London who say otherwise - more than half of them on the record.

- Henry Dyer Daniel Boffey Mark Blacklock

So who is correct? It has become the crux of the row that has engulfed Farage.

His spokesperson has said: “There is no primary evidence. It’s one person’s word against another.” They have accused the Guardian of seeking to smear Farage. Here are a selection of people who have claimed they were either victims of or witnesses to that kind of deeply offensive behaviour.

Peter Ettedgui

“[Farage] would sidle up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right’ or ‘gas them’, sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers...

“I’d never experienced antisemitism growing up, so the first time that this vicious verbal abuse came out of Farage’s mouth was deeply shocking.

“But I wasn’t his only target. I’d hear him calling other students ‘Paki’ or ‘Wog’ and urging them to ‘go home’. I tried to ignore him, but it was humiliating. It was shaming. This kind of abuse cuts through to the core of your identity.”

Anthony Butler

“Peter Ettedgui’s recollections of Nigel Farage’s naked racism and antisemitism in his schooldays left me with a sense of deep regret.

“A contemporary and classmate of Farage, I clearly recall him relentlessly hectoring and bullying Ettedgui with shouts of ‘stupid yid’ in the playground.

“Peter was a small, rather shy and sensitive boy, and Nigel was a physical coward who could easily have been silenced. But I do not recall anyone doing so...

"If he will accept it, I apologise wholeheartedly to Peter Ettedgui."

Jean-Pierre Lihou

"[Farage] used to say things like, you know, 'Jude', to Peter, which is the German for Jew, in the way it was said in the 1930s, a long 'u' in a menacing way, you know? It's pretty awful.

"Farage used to say things like 'Hitler was right' and 'gas em' - you know, that sort of thing. But he also used to sing this song, which I later discovered was based on George Formby's Bless Them All.