Memories: Nigel Farage’s Schooldays

 

Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK political party, has been much in the news during the UK election recently. Farage admits to liking a drink and chain-smoking cigarettes and this behaviour dates back to his schooldays.

Michael Crick in a biography of Farage recalls his antics at the elite fee-paying school Dulwich College in south London during the late 1970s.

He writes:

Farage’s rebellious streak was often to the fore. In his fourth year [he would be about 14 years old], he and other members of his form clubbed together to buy a bottle of whisky which they brought into school and drank behind the cricket pavilion before morning assembly. ‘We bellowed “Jerusalem” with unwonted fervour,’ Farage recounted. ‘All save Winterbourne [whose] internal organs were evidently more fragile and startled than ours … To our horror, the boy turned white, clutched at his stomach, winced, lurched and collapsed like a stringless puppet.’

In the subsequent enquiry, the boys had to see the head of the middle school, D. V. Knight, one by one. Farage explained how cold it had been that morning. There had been some whisky around, so he thought it a good idea to have a ‘couple of nips’ before ‘plunging into the fray.’

As for who supplied the whisky, Farage refused to say. His classmates were horrified when they heard what he’d said. They’d denied it all. That evening after the rest were caned one by one, Farage was last to visit Knight for punishment. Because he’d owned up, he was spared the thrashing and told to go out and ‘develop some sort of brain’.

Controversially, considering his past behaviour and some of the views he publicly spouted, Farage was made a prefect in his senior year.

Crick writes:

Despite his own record as a miscreant, Farage actually thought Dulwich should be tougher on boys who misbehaved. This was an era when corporal punishment was still legal, though the cane was rarely applied at Dulwich. Fellow prefect Roger Gough recalls one of the get-togethers which the Master [headmaster, David Emms] held with the prefects every year.

Once David Emms had delivered his address, he called for questions, ‘Nigell sort of sprang into action,’ Gough says, ‘heels clicked, back straight, and said, “Sir, there is a growing problem with indiscipline within the school. We should use the cane more.” And David Emms said, “I’m not sure where it is, actually.” And Terry Walsh, the chain-smoking deputy Master and head of the cadet force said: “I’ve got about six of them in my study!” The rising tide of anarchy wasn’t evident to the rest of us. It’s almost a measure – like all things Nigel – of how much of it was an act.’

Michael Crick, One Party After Another: The Disruptive Life of Nigel Farage, (Simon and Schuster, London: 2023)

Nigel Farage, at school, aged 18 (dressed in his Combined Cadets Force uniform), and in familiar pose more recently (Both pictures published in the Daily Telegraph)

Main picture credit: Generated by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

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