First, let’s clear up how to say the name. “What would you park your car in?” says the leader of Ukip. A car park? It’s pronounced Nigel Farpark? Oh I see, a garage. Which in my house … well, there isn’t one in my house … but if there was it’d rhyme with marriage. So it’s Faridge like Claridge, the London hotelier family that put the boo into boobs. Boo.
Right, this is Steph and Dom Meet Nigel Farage (Channel 4), Steph and Dom being the posh ones off Gogglebox with a posh B&B in Sandwich, Kent. Nigel (should that be pronounced a bit French too, I wonder – Knee-gel – for extra classiness?) is coming for the evening. First, they have to get ready, which means hunting for the dog, Steph leaning out of an upstairs window and shouting “you tit” to her husband, and Dom shouting “you tit” back up to her. Not exactly Romeo and Juliet, more like awkward staged banter (banter!), but they’re trying to show what a fun, relaxed couple they are, I think. Maybe keep the tits out, or in, when Nigel arrives. He doesn’t like them, not in public anyway.
Here he is, delivered by black Land Rover to the Parkers’ symmetrical house, which is called the Salutation. “Ah, good afternoon,” Dom greets him warmly. “You caught me getting ahead of the jump,” a reference to the bottle of Pimm’s he holds in one hand. Nigel likes a beer, though, everyone knows that. Dom opens a bottle, the first of many. “Oh, God, that’s a bit lively,” Dom says as he sprays Nigel’s trousers, almost as if it’s intentional; shaken up (if not by Dom then by a cheeky television person). This won’t be the last soaking those trousers get this evening.
They join Steph on the terrace, Nigel sparks up a Rothmans (proof he really does exist in the 1980s, and Dom goes straight for the jugular. Now he’s in Europe, what’s he going to do, rip it apart, shake it up, try to change it?
“Poor bloke hasn’t had his first drink yet. Leave him alone,” says Steph, cutting Dom’s career as political interviewer rudely short. But this isn’t Question Time, it isn’t about grilling Nigel on policy. That was clear when we saw Steph and Dom doing their research, a little light Googling (that Hitler picture) and YouTubing (an egging). It’s about trying to get to Nigel the man.
You can see the thinking behind the show; send him round to see those affable posh pissheads off the telly who will ply him with booze, he’ll feel comfortable and open up like a well-shaken beer, then drown himself. He does touch on his marriages (marages?), kids, his cancer that left him with just one ball. But Steph and Dom are not good at asking questions, at digging a little here and there, and knowing when to shut up; it’s not just John Humphrys etc who can relax, but Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross, can too.
They are good hosts, though, especially when it comes to refilling Nigel’s – and their own – glasses. They’re always a bit tiddly on Gogglebox; you get the impression – or they’d like to give the impression – that they live life though a balmy boozy haze, and that the clocks at the Salutation are frequently nudged forward so that Pimm’s o’clock comes early, to take the edge off a day. It works – they work – better on Gogglebox though, in snippets, interspersed among others. They don’t fill half an hour of television as well as they fill glasses.
And their guest? Well, it is extraordinary watching someone who wants to be taken seriously as a politician – is getting taken seriously as a politician, getting votes anyway – getting drunk on camera. Properly sozzled, missing steps, dropping glasses, spilling, slurring. (They should’ve given him painkillers, too, then his true colours would have come popping out.) And then it’s a bit boring, because watching other people getting drunk – pub bores, B&B bores – is a bit boring, unless you are doing so, too. I imagine an evening at the Salutation with Steph and Dom would be a lot of fun, but that doesn’t make it great television.
Sore heads in the morning. Time for that painkiller perhaps, Nigel? And a memo to sack the person whose idea it was to go on that one. It can’t have done him any good, can it? Except that people might say look, hahaha, he’s getting drunk, he’s not like the others, just a regular bloke … God help us.
