Farage treats jungle to end of the peer show

Hands up who had Nigel Farage explaining the UK’s bicameral legislature to Made in Chelsea’s Sam Thompson on Saturday night ITV on their 2023 bingo?

Because that’s what viewers were treated to last night, as Farage fulminated against the House of Lords – a body which, one suspects, he would literally gnaw his arm off to join – to campmates.

“You get a cheque every day,” he said wistfully. “You get 300 quid a day for turning up, yeah.”

“That pays for lunch,” said jockey Frankie Dettori.

“I went to the House of Lords about two months ago,” said Farage. “A guy that I served with in the late nineties and early noughties in Brussels invited me for lunch. I said ‘what’s it like here?’. He said ‘it’s the best retirement home in the country’. He said ‘I get a taxi in every morning’. He said ‘I do a bit of paperwork, sign in for the money, get a lunch in the subsidised dining room’. And it’s old-fashioned English food, it’s roasts…

“They go into the House of Lords at 2.30pm for the opening of debates or whatever it is, and then piss off home.”

And the toast, declared Tony from Hollyoaks, is 5p a slice. Perhaps that’s why his noughties restaurant venture in Hollyoaks Village, Gnot Gnosh, was forced to close its doors?

“The House of Lords is a complete anachronism,” said Farage. “It really is.”

The word confused Thompson, who was educated at Bradfield College (£45,300 a year boarding, £36,240 day). “What’s that mean?,” he said.

“It’s a throwback that needs modernising,” said Farage. “And it’s been stuffed full of people who’ve given parties money. It’s pretty corrupt, really. But for those who are in there, it’s a fantastic life.”

But he did concede that he as an MEP had been given €300 a day in allowances.

“In my case, Sam, it got more than spent,” he laughed, a cheeky reference, perhaps, to the time he was docked half his monthly salary after a European Parliament investigation alleged he had misspent public funds intended for staffing his office. The scamp!