COUNT Binface has hit out at the BBC after a presenter attempted to unmask him live on air.
The comedy candidate is currently the main challenger to Nigel Farage after the Reform UK leader resigned as an MP on Monday, triggering a by-election in his Clacton constituency. None of the other main parties have chosen to field a candidate.
During an interview on Newsnight on Wednesday, BBC presenter Paddy O'Connell asked the joke candidate to "bin off the bin”.
“Serious times. Why don’t you bin off the bin on Newsnight now?”
He then added: “We know that your name is Jon. We know really a lot about you. Isn’t this time for serious times, to bin off the bin?
Count Binface declined, saying: “ Has anyone here seen Return of the Jedi? Nobody wants to know what's underneath a Recyclon. It’s disgusting. It’s absolutely putrefying.”
He then hit out at the BBC (below).
🚨 WATCH: Count Binface responds to the BBC unmasking him live on Newsnight pic.twitter.com/Q7T27sYHry
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) July 8, 2026
“I’ll tell you. You want to talk to Count Binface and then you get me on Newsnight and you start trying to deconstruct a character. I would say what are we doing here?
“On a programme which used to construct proper investigative journalism. And now is a souped up podcast, Paddy.”
O’Connell then responded: “Well, I mean the souped up podcast is where people want to know about transparency. This is the point. You’re not transparent. That’s a criticism being made of Nigel Farage.”
Farage has faced criticism over his decision to trigger a by-election before the completion of a parliamentary probe into his undeclared donations, which is now paused after his resignation – but will resume if he is re-elected.
Writing in The Express newspaper on Thursday, he said other parties were “running scared” of the vote and accused Labour, the media and “the whole establishment” of doing “everything they can to destroy me, my family, the party, our donors and the millions who support us”.
He wrote: “In our democracy, who should decide who gets to sit as an MP or form a government?
“Should it be the voters of seats such as Clacton? Or should it be the British establishment, through its political agents, media mouthpieces and parliamentary committees?”
He is being investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner over whether he should have registered a £5 million gift from cryptocurrency tycoon Christopher Harborne, which he said was needed to fund the security he required as a result of multiple threats against him.
The Reform leader is also facing questions over support provided by George Cottrell after a Sunday Times investigation.
New MPs are required to register any gifts worth more than £300 they received in the previous 12 months, except where the gift “could not be reasonably thought by others” to relate to their political activities.
Farage maintains he has done nothing wrong.
