Farage is the heir to Tebbit's no-nonsense Conservatism

They say “never meet your heroes” - but meeting your antiheroes can be absolutely fascinating.

- TIM BALE

At least, that was my experience when I met Norman Tebbit. How could it not have been? Already branded a “semi-house-trained polecat” as an opposition MP, once in government after 1979, his take-noprisoners, right-wing persona meant that anyone growing up in the Seventies and Eighties in a vaguely left-leaning household couldn’t help but see him as the Thatcherite thug his puppet played in the phenomenally popular satirical show, Spitting Image.

But there was always more to him than that - which quickly became apparent when, in 2017, we met for a chat over a cup of tea in the House of Lords.

It wasn’t that the so-called “Chingford Skinhead” had mellowed in the sense of resiling from many of his characteristic and sometimes notorious beliefs - he might have admitted that he’d been wrong in his opinion of the Ugandan Asians who'd been forced to flee to Britain in the early 1970s. But he was still clearly sceptical about the willingness and ability of migrants to integrate (the origin of his infamous “cricket test”). And he was still very much a Europhobe, and opposed to gay marriage.