Farage hits out as fresh claims of 'vindictive' teenage racism emerge

Nigel Farage has turned on broadcasters for questioning him about his alleged teenage racism and antisemitism as the number of school contemporaries who recalled such behaviour to the Guardian reached 28.

- Daniel Boffey Henry Dyer Rowena Mason

In an angry performance at a press conference in London yesterday, the Reform UK leader suggested he would boycott the BBC and said ITV had its own case to answer, as he repeatedly shouted “Bernard Manning”.

Manning, a comedian from Manchester who died in 2007, was a regular face on British television in the 1970s, but he drifted from the public eye after claims that his material was racist and misogynistic.

The intemperate performance by Farage, whose party has slipped in the national polls in recent weeks, came as a further five school contemporaries came forward to the Guardian with allegations that they witnessed deeply offensive racist or antisemitic behaviour by him.

The former Dulwich college pupils said they had been motivated to speak now by the response of Farage and others in his party to an investigation by the Guardian based on the accounts of racism.

Reform’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, said yesterday that all of those who had made the claims were liars. This included Peter Ettedgui, 61, an Emmy and Bafta-winning director, who recalled Farage repeatedly growling “Hitler was right,’ or “Gas them” at him at school.

However, Nick Hearn, a banker who described himself as “a conservative with a small ‘c’”, told the Guardian he had regularly seen Ettedgui being abused by the now Reform leader, and called on Farage to “come clean”.

Far from being “banter”, as Farage has previously described some of his remarks, Hearn called it “personal (and) vindictive.” He is the eighth pupil to offer corroboration of Ettedgui’s claims.

Hearn said: “[Farage] was consistent, and he was persistent. Peter and I used to have lunch together in the sort of cloisters, a thoroughfare between the main buildings. There were people going backwards and forwards all the time, and I witnessed on multiple occasions, sort of little snide comments and personal, vindictive, racist comments.