Stewart Lee

When push comes to shove, when Farage this week was saying that he's the same as Bernard Manning, he's going, you know, it's just a joke.

Well, we should help people out.

Okay, Nigel Farage has allegedly made anti-Semitic and racist comments as a teenager.

At school.

At school, and as an 18-year-old at school.

And his justification, when somebody from ITV News tried to pick him up on it, was that ITV had Bernard Manning on in the 70s, which it did.

Getting on for 30 people.

And I thought, well, it's not the same as Bernard Manning, because Bernard Manning didn't go to Jewish people, Hitler was right, and then make the sound of a gas chamber, right?

And also, Bernard Manning...

Whether you like him or not, he operates in the magic circle protected space of the theatre, you know.

And people have kind of made a choice to go in there, whereas it's not the same as Nigel Farage allegedly saying to a black student, what country are your family from?

There's the way back.

In fact, if Bernard Manning did that on stage, it would be quite funny.

He'd go, where are you from, mate?

Oh, well, that's the door.

You know, you can sort of see how that would work as...

So I obviously don't like Bernard Manning, but I'm not going to have a member of the public.

I'm not going to have a non-comedian misrepresent him.

Look, I don't know why it's such a big deal.

I mean, I saw Russell Howard on telly doing a joke about how that old lady that won Britain's Got Talent, Susan Boyle, was ugly.