Nigel Farage repeatedly shouted the name of controversial comedian Bernard Manning at journalists as part of a bizarre rant after he was asked about allegations he racially abused a schoolmate.
The Reform UK leader also criticised the BBC over the blackface and homophobia he said it repeatedly broadcast in the 1970s, accusing the broadcaster of “double standards”.
It came as prime minister Keir Starmer launched a new blistering attack on the Reform UK leader accusing him of being “toxic and divisive” during a trip to Scotland.
The row erupted after Reform MP Richard Tice was asked about the allegations surrounding Mr Farage’s schooldays on the BBC’s Today programme earlier on Thursday.
Ducking a question about whether his former schoolmate was lying at a press conference, Mr Farage called the Today programme journalist Emma Barnett “lower grade”.
He then accused the broadcaster of “double standards and hypocrisy” because of television programmes such as The Black and White Minstrel Show, which has been criticised for “blackface” and for featuring Mr Manning.
Mr Farage said: “I cannot put up with the double standards of the BBC about what I’m alleged to have said 49 years ago and what you were putting out on mainstream content.
“So, I want an apology from the BBC for virtually everything you did throughout the 1970s and 80s.”
He later shouted the name “Bernard Manning” at a journalist from ITV who asked a similar question.
The comedian, the self-styled king of the offensive joke, repeatedly came under fire for the content of his act.
In the 1990s, he was secretly filmed telling racist jokes at a police charity dinner and criticised by then prime minister John Major. A Labour MP even asked the attorney general to consider charging the comedian with inciting racial hatred for the stream of racist insults and jokes.
Mr Farage has been accused of “persistent” racial abuse by a school contemporary who rejects the Reform UK leader’s claims it was “banter”.
Peter Ettedgui, whose Jewish grandparents escaped Nazi Germany, has alleged Mr Farage growled “Hitler was right”, hissed “gas them” and told him “to the gas chambers” when the pair attended Dulwich College in the late 1970s.
He is among more than a dozen former pupils of the south London school who have accused Mr Farage of making antisemitic and racist remarks in claims originally reported in The Guardian.
The Reform UK leader appeared to leave open the possibility he may have made racist remarks without “intent” during his first interview since the claims were published, in which he told ITV: “I would never, ever do it in a hurtful or insulting way.” He also admitted to engaging in “banter in a playground”.
But in a prepared statement, he later “categorically” denied he had ever made such comments and suggested the claims were politically motivated.
The Tories said the press conference showed that “Reform’s one man band is in chaos once again.”
Labour chair Anna Turley said: “Nigel Farage can’t get his story straight. It really shouldn’t be this difficult to say whether he racially abused people in the past.”
She said he should “be apologising to the victims of his alleged appalling remarks. Reform want to drag our politics into the gutter. They are simply not fit for high office.”
Meanwhile, on a trip to Scotland, Sir Keir responded to Nigel Farage’s comments on the number of schoolchildren who speak English describing him as “toxic” and “divisive”.
He said: “He’s a disgrace. He’s a toxic, divisive disgrace. All he wants to do is tear communities apart. In Glasgow, the diversity, the compassion, is celebrated. It’s part of, not just Glasgow, but Scotland.
“I am proud that that is part of what Scotland is. And I, as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, want to serve every community in Scotland.
“I don’t go around picking and choosing and trying to divide. I think it’s particularly poor that he’s reached right into children now to start that divide. All he’s interested in is the politics of grievance, and the politics of division, and he’s doing it to distract because what he doesn’t want to be asked about is the comments that he’s made in the past, which he can’t give a proper explanation for.”
A Reform source told The Independent the prime minister was “desperate, sinking in the polls and lashing out as a consequence of his own failures in office”.