GB News 22nd July 2021
Present:
Ian Wright (Food and Drinks Confederation)
Pierre-Henri Duman (Republican MP for Calais)
Peter Marx (Late-night venue operator)
Monty Panesar (Retired cricketer)
Venue: Farage
Your humble author was thrilled to discover that, while reviewing last week’s lunchtime GB News Halligan and DePerio show, he was literally the only viewer. As an act of kindness towards presenters, big Irishman Liam and hatchet-faced but voluptuous Gloria, the diplomatic phrase used by the industry-standard British Audience Research Board is ‘no measurable audience.’
Now I know why none of you contradicted me.
No such luxury is afforded this week as Nigel Farage is now in the badly lit West London building. His 7 pm to 8 pm Farage show’s ratings are already touching 100,000. More than BBC News 24 and Sky News achieve in some of their time slots.
During the week, Mr Farage concentrated upon the issue of illegal dingy immigration across the English Channel.
Nigel set off from the Kent coast in his own boat as if Captain Ahab striking out from Nantucket. Harpoon in hand, an Andrew Neil sermon delivered from a pulpit made of Albanian car wash sponges, rang in his ears. If one may be allowed to paraphrase Melville’s Father Mapple of the New Bedford Whaleman’s Chapel,
“Woe to the Afgan who wants to drive a lorry! Even if we’re short of lorry drivers!”
In the guff that comes with GB News, we are promised a bit of a makeover. The lighting will be better. The sound has already been improved. A video wall is being installed. There will be news bulletins, but no word of subtitles. This takes us to last week’s review. Yes, there really is a Bex Deadman but, hand on heart, Catherine Tramlines was a well-intentioned guess before a muffled soundtrack.
The latest instalment of Farage started badly (or not) with Nigel’s lips moving but no sound coming out.
“Well, well, well, what a mess,” observed Mr Farage as the mike was switched on. No, he wasn’t talking about the sound man but about the vaccine, delta variant, Freedom Day, rising infections and an epidemic of ‘pings’.
“Far from opening up we’re beginning a process of locking down,” he noted.
Nigel Farage begins the programme with a monologue telling you what he thinks, before introducing his first guest to the programme and broadening the discussion. On this night, Ian Wright of the Food and Drinks confederation was present.
Mr Wright pointed out the pings were affecting many parts of a complicated set of supply chains. We’re not going to run out of food, he assured us, but choice will be eroded.
It’s a problem but don’t panic, summarised the host.
Mr Wright advised the Government to get their fingers out and get busy with ‘test and release’.
“Why not take a lateral flow test at work?” Suggested Nigel. The result is available in 8 to 10 minutes. Ian half agreed but didn’t want people to delete the app as we need the data it provides. Ping then test then go to work if negative. Test again the next day. Symptoms? Stay home.
Nigel had been in the English Channel yesterday and had seen a boat that had illegally left the French coast being escorted across the channel by the French Navy.
This in a week Pritti Patel gave France £54m to stop dingies coming.
Pierre-Henri Duman, Republican MP for Calais, was called to account.
A youthful M. Duman said they had thousands of immigrants every day in Calais and all along the coast from Belgium to Normandy. Most boats were stopped at night on the shore, but the French couldn’t be expected to stop them all.
They’re launching in broad daylight! Countered Mr Farage.
Cliffs! Trees! World War Two concrete buildings where they hide. In less than two minutes they can launch, insisted Pierre-Henri.
Nigel had heard the gendarmerie weren’t trying because of EU rules. We’re giving you lots of money…..
M. Duman insisted most are stopped. I do ‘av zee numbers. Why do they want to come to England? They are all from British colonies: Eritrea, Sudan, Bangladesh. They have relatives in the UK and it is easier for them in England than in France. So said the Republican MP reminding us the British Empire covered huge swathes of the globe while the French was dots in Polynesia.
Farage quoted a United Nations Charter which insists refugees stay in the first safe country they reach.
M.Duman had a better charter, the Geneva Convention, which says no such thing.
No, the UN Charter, insisted Farage, going on to call France “a rogue state”.
M. Duman became nervous, his accent slipping beyond parody and into incomprehension.
“How would you like it if we towed them back to Calais?” Wondered Mr Farage aloud.
His French opponent began to point, like a French general choosing a fine wine while ignoring the Panzer squadron advancing across the parterres. He had a solution. A French solution, special cities in France to process people. And a British solution, send more refugees to Albion.
No, no, no, fumed Farage, we are Brexit Britain, why should we pay for the EU migration policy mistakes?
“Mais, non, non, non,” retorted the Frenchman, summoning the rhetoric of De Gaulle and the logic of Decartes, “but you remain in the geographic Europe!”
Touché.
An impressed sounding Farage bid adieu to the smug-looking Frenchman with a promise to invite him back.
One of the Kent Farages, Nigel was born in Farnborough, near Orpington, 13 miles and 36 chains southeast of Charing Cross. He was educated at the exclusive £45,000 a year Dulwich College, where Puffin’s favourite, anti-selective education activist and critic of the British Empire, Comrade Sharmishta “Shami” Chakrabarti, Baroness Chakrabarti, Commander of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, sends her son.
His former teachers recall Farage as a cheeky boy who wound people up, especially lefty teachers with no sense of humour.
As a spoiler to the 2013 UKIP annual conference, when Farage was party leader, Channel 4 News published an internal letter from his old school.
Amongst other things it claimed that schoolboy Farage was unfit to be a prefect because, “At a Combined Cadet Force (CCF) camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler-youth songs.”
Not to worry, Nigel was awarded the royal blue tie with a single black stripe all the same, with a member of staff noting, “a fascist, but that was no reason why he would not make a good perfect.”
UKIP also went from strength to strength, the high point being the Brexit referendum win in 2016.
After school, Mr Farage did not go to university but followed his father and brother to the City where he brokered on the London Metal Exchange.
His father being the interesting Guy Justus Oscar Farage who served as a national serviceman and then as a territorial army officer before helping to found a military museum dedicated to the Kent and Sharpshooters Yeomanry. Presently the proud owners of a Saladin armoured car, a Churchill tank turret and a 25lb field gun.
According to ethnicelebs Nigel Farage is the second cousin, once removed, of painter Rodrigo Moynihan whose school of realism work “White Whale and Migrant Dingy in Channel Fog Viewed From The Prow of My Cousin’s Boat” can be viewed here.
Ping! 620,000 have been zapped by the Covid app and are staying at home. Is it time to scrap the app?
Nigel preferred cheap, quick lateral flow tests to save the private sector. They keep chopping and changing their minds over a vaccine passport. Boris had said there wouldn’t be one but when Nadim Zadawi had announced a vaccine passport app in the House of Commons he had added, “We reserve the right to mandate its use in the future.”
And identity cards and a whole host of other things predicted Farage. Are there enough libertarians on the Tory backbenchers? What will the other parties do?
Tom Hardwood was on hand outside Number 10. The Government will lose any vaccine passport vote in September, announced Tom, as Liberal and Labour MPs will vote against Boris as will a newly formed Big Brother Watch pro-privacy campaign group of 43 Tory MPs.
Peter Marx, CEO of a late-night venue operator, informed us nightclubs are not a soup of virus. Nowadays an average club has £250,000 of ventilation. It isn’t 1983. There are risk assessments no matter what. That’s what we should be doing instead of political vaccine passport claptrap.
Russia! Germany is dependant on Russia for gas. The Biden administration has backed a deal for a new Nord Stream Two pipeline. “It’s the Remainers, globalists and Democrats who are in thrall to the Russians. Not Don Trump and me,” pointed out Farage.
In the final section, Monty Panesar (a retired cricketer) was in Farage’s bar for a pint. A pint of orange juice in the case of Monty. The video wall behind them had turned from Union Jacks to rows of bottles.
It started off nice and chummy with Farage saying he is a cricket fan and Monty replying that he used to phone Farage when he was on LBC. The first question was, more or less, “Monty, why are you so popular?”
They then talked a strange game of leather ball and willow bat of which this author knows nothing.
Against Australia, Anderson and Panesar had to survive for eleven and a half overs. And they did. Is that good? They’d batted like rabbits. Or maybe they hadn’t. Backfield pointers? Bring back the MP for Calais! Now I know how Puffins who don’t like Wendyball feel on GP football nights.
Nigel Farage was against the Hundreds. He’d driven past one the other night (played on the verge?). DJ’s and fireworks, Nigel was more of a five-day man, why mess about with the game?
Even winning the World Cup hadn’t increased participation, replied Monty. The selling point for Hundreds will be the quality of the cricket. The TV viewing figures were encouraging. Monty would take Nigel to a game to convince him.
Will we beat India? Asked Nigel.
Only if you pick Ollie Robinson, was the reply. DJs, fireworks and tweets about ****** and !!!!!, not to mention @@@@@@@.
Referencing the Wendyball penalty takers, Nigel wondered if this is a racist country?
Sensing a minefield, Monty turned the question around, asking why when England loses does racism emerge?
Because the internet is a sewer, replied Farage. Some of the offensive tweets are from abroad, some are from agent provocateurs. It is not reflective of us as a whole, said Nigel knocking the bails off Panesar’s race card.
On a lighter note, the host ended by asking, “What next for Monty Panesar?”
“The Monty Panesar Show on GB News,” replied the ebullient retired cricketer, “after I’ve taken you to a Hundred.”
© Always Worth Saying 2021
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
