Why is Nigel Farage the only person in Britain you can throw ANY insult at? Writes JAN MOIR

What is it about Nigel Farage that makes people feel they can say anything they like about him, or treat him with the disdain usually reserved for toxic waste or tyrants?

Nigel believes in Brexit, in controlled immigration and in stopping the small boats delivering illegal migrants to this country. For holding these beliefs, he is portrayed by many on the Left as some kind of extremist maniac, hitting the despot gauge a few notches to the right of Pol Pot.

Yet far from being radical or dangerous, these opinions are held by the majority of people in this country. Those who can see exactly what is going on here, their clear gaze unclouded with the toxic smoke raised by false accusations of racism or bigotry.

Migration figures released yesterday show that 1.2 million people arrived in the UK in 2022, driving a net increase of three-quarters of a million people in a single year. Arriving in a country, I might add, with more than five million on out-of-work benefits and everyone else struggling with the highest tax burden since World War II amid a cost-of-living crisis.

Yet raising a bat-squeak of concern about this can have you instantly demonised as a bigot and a racist, especially if your name happens to be N*g*l F*rage. However, if you put this issue to the electorate right now, I suspect that the majority would agree with him. Tighter controls need to be implemented as a matter of urgency. For if Britain wants to avoid becoming an international basket case, it simply cannot afford to stagger on in this way.

Despite this, the likes of television star Lorraine Kelly feel it is perfectly OK to make horrid, body-shaming remarks about Farage, a 59-year-old politician she makes no secret of despising. 'He's got the face he deserves,' sneered the daytime host, after describing his shower scene on I'm A Celebrity (ITV1) as 'traumatising'.

Lorraine would never dare utter such a thing about, for random example, Jacqui Smith or Jeremy Corbyn or Humza Yousaf — so why say it about Farage? Well, because she's a typical showbiz Leftie and he's very much not, that's why. And she can say what she likes about him, without fear of censure or condemnation — because it is always open season on Nigel.

Down in the jungle, things are even worse. Until Wednesday, campmates in the popular reality show had limited themselves to making occasional snide and scornful remarks about Brexit in front of Farage — so far, so normal. Then Nella Rose let rip. 'Apparently you are anti-immigrant,' she told Farage. 'Who told you that?' he asked. 'The internet,' she replied, which said it all, really.

Nella Rose is a mouthy 26-year-old YouTuber and influencer, although one shudders to think whom or what she might be influencing. She informed the former leader of the Brexit Party that 'black people don't like you' and 'you want us gone'.

Complete nonsense, of course, but Nella Rose personifies the kind of boorish, uneducated, entitled young adults who make me despair for the future. She's got a vague idea about nothing, hasn't thought deeply about anything and has that dim, groupthink, online echo-chamber view of politics and politicians. Nella Rose believes what she speed-read on X (formerly Twitter) about Farage when she was painting her nails on a bus. And now she won't listen to a word he is saying, not even when he is standing in front of her patiently explaining his point of view.

'We cannot go on with the numbers that are coming,' he reasoned, but she just shouted him down in a tirade of moronic rhetoric and her own ill-conceived prejudices. Despite being depicted by her as the architect of some kind of mad supremacist policy, Farage did well to keep his manners and his cool. I suppose he is used to it!

Nella is not alone in her beliefs; for me, she represents the utter banality of the Great Ignorati, a virulent strain of that generation of under-35s who are quick to take the huff about anything and everything; those who demand that their own rights and views are respected at all times, while they wilfully disrespect the beliefs of others. Nella Rose believes that Brexit was, in her own words, all about 'sending all the immigrants back' and that's it, end of.

Earlier in the camp she got bizarrely furious with campmate Fred Sirieix. The First Dates maitre d' incurred her wrath because he merely said he was 'old enough to be your father' and later encouraged her to eat something.

This resulted in Nella Rose refusing to be his friend. 'I don't wanna talk to you, I don't want to be around you. I only allow people to disrespect me once. You live on that side, I live on this side,' she said, drawing a line down the centre of the camp. 'Can you not clock on the vibe?' she bawled at him.

It is tragic that this young woman, given such a wonderful public platform, can only come up with all this entitled trash. She even voiced the opinion that Nigel Farage shouldn't be allowed in South London, which she seems to imagine is some kind of woke kingdom.

For someone so quick to take offence and who is hyper-aware of race issues, Nella Rose seems awfully keen on fomenting discord. But she probably doesn't know what that means either, if you clock my vibe.

Things are getting serious in Hollywood, where Susan Sarandon has been dropped by her talent agency UTA for using anti-Semitic rhetoric. 

This followed her appearance at a pro-Palestinian rally, where the actress stated that in the U.S. 'a lot of people are afraid to be Jewish right now and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence'.

She sounded almost glad — but what did she mean? That it was all right for Jewish people to be attacked at Jewish rallies because it brought some kind of moral equivalence? It doesn't make any sense. 

Nearly 3.5 million Muslims live in the U.S., where they enjoy a wonderful freedom and tolerance that is sadly lacking in much of the Muslim world. I suspect that they view living in America for the triumph it is, rather than the tragedy she imagines. No wonder she has been dropped.

Mistletoe and whine, Cliff

Sir Cliff Richard revealed himself to be a walking, talking, living creep on ITV's This Morning on Monday. Who knew?

Bad enough that he was still moaning about Connie Francis beating him to the No 1 slot back in 1958 and detailing what Val Parnell told him about staying humble many, many of your earthling years ago. But it was his fat-shaming revelations about Elvis that were shocking.

We heard that one day, way back in the Triassic age, someone offered to introduce Cliff to his hero, Elvis Presley. But Cliff said no because Elvis was going through a fat phase. 'He had put on a lot of weight,' he moaned.

'And I thought, if I'm having a photograph taken with him and it's going to be hanging on my refrigerator, he's gotta look good. So I put it off. And of course, then he died.'

How thoughtless of Elvis! First for putting on weight and then for going and dying before losing enough hamburger poundage for Sir Cliff of Ryvita to find his appearance acceptable.

Really! I can't take any more mistletoe and whine from this fattist old fool.

On the Table Manners podcast, Princess Eugenie revealed that life in public has left her with 'issues around food'. 'I guess everybody has that if you're in the public eye,' she chirped. 'I guess within our family, it happens at that perfect age where you're, you know, 13 years old and you've got that dorky bowl haircut and you're a bit chubby and you know, all the boys are bullying you and all that kind of stuff.'

My heart bleeds blue blood. Who knew that being a minor royal could be so majorly tragic?

When they started their 'rainbow family', Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie must have imagined an idyllic domestic situation, presiding over a cute brood of their adopted and natural children, of all colours of the rainbow, their very own Benetton ad — only that is not how it turned out.

The couple split seven years ago — and there has been nothing but strife since. A rancorous custody battle has followed an acrimonious divorce. On a social media site, son Pax, 19, has called his father a 'world-class a**hole' and a 'despicable person' who makes his four youngest children 'tremble in fear'.

Is Brad really a monster? Or could Angelina do more to stop such parental alienation and encourage the children to respect and love their father?

Pax, who was adopted by Jolie before she met Pitt, sounds a very angry young man. One suspects this broken family's trauma is far from over.

Beeb must get tough on online antics

Has Gary Lineker broken the new BBC social media guidelines? On X, formerly known as Twitter, the football pundit shared a link to an interview in which an academic described Israel's actions in Gaza as 'textbook genocide'.

Raz Segal, an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University in the U.S., also said that the Hamas attack on October 7 'was not a crime related to the Holocaust in any way' —despite many Jewish people claiming that is exactly how it felt to them.

One wonders why Lineker, who has already been warned about his online antics, decided to venture into this complicated, fraught situation. His silence on October 7 was deafening, so why the interest now? Surely drawing attention to this contentious view is just asking for trouble?

After all, the BBC wasted no time in sacking Carol Vorderman after she breached their new social media guidelines. But Carol is a relatively marginal figure, a low-hanging fruit loop hosting one show a week on a Welsh radio station.

Gary Lineker is something else. The Match Of The Day host is a major star, their highest-paid broadcaster with 8.9 million followers on X. What are the Beeb going to do about him? All together now — absolutely nothing.