After accusing his audience on Thursday of having a “total lack of comprehension,” the Ukip leader will have to battle through a 30-minute BBC1 programme – Election 2015: Ask Nigel Farage – taking questions from another audience.
The programme will be aired at the end of the month, on the same night that Tory leader David Cameron, Labour’s Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats are questioned in the final pre-election television showdown. They will each appear in a Question Time special, taking 30-minute turns facing questions from the same audience in Leeds.
The discussion with Farage, which is set to be chaired by Jo Coburn, will take place in Birmingham and will only be broadcast in England. Scottish National party leader Nicola Sturgeon will face a similar programme in Glasgow, chaired by Glen Campbell, and Leanne Wood, the Plaid Cymru leader, will face questions in Cardiff.
All of the programmes will be broadcast on 30 April – one week before polling day.
A Ukip spokesman said: “Nigel Farage is delighted to accept the BBC’s invitation to once again engage with the British public.”
The announcement comes after Farage said he would not be making a formal complaint following his accusation that the audience at Thursday’s leaders’ debate was “ridiculously to the left”.
During the programme, he was booed after claiming: “There just seems to be a total lack of comprehension on this panel – and indeed among this audience, which is a remarkable audience even by the leftwing standards of the BBC.”
He went on: “This lot are pretty leftwing, believe me. The real audience are sitting at home actually.”
The debate chairman, David Dimbleby, interrupted the Ukip leader to point out that the audience had been selected by an independent polling organisation to represent the balance between all parties.
Miliband warned Farage: “It’s never a great idea to attack the audience, Nigel.”
Afterwards, Farage maintained his criticism: “The fact that it was done independently doesn’t mean it was done right. That audience was ridiculously to the left. I felt very isolated.”
