Desert Island Dickhead

A single source in as yet unpublished biography written by a retired Tory peer starts a debate about Nigel Farage being banned from the BBC's Desert Island Discs.

Previously: Trapped inside the Blair Rich Project

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There’s a sort of British newspaper headline that I think of as the self-raising row. It implies that a controversy that it creates actually existed before it was written. This weekend provided a perfect example:

BBC in fresh bias row after Desert Island Discs ‘bans Nigel Farage’ as Reform leader would make woke staff on Radio 4 show ‘feel unsafe’, biography claims

Before the Mail on Sunday published that story, there was no ‘fresh row’ for the BBC to be in. The row was ‘fresh’ because the Mail had just baked it using ingredients provided by a soon-to-be-published biography of Nigel Farage written by Lord Ashcroft, the Tory donor and former member of the House of Lords with a long track record of including dubious claims in the books he writes. His biography of David Cameron, co-written with Isabel Oakeshott, was the source of the hilarious, infamous, and ultimately utterly confected story about the former Prime Minister and an intimate encounter with a pig’s head.

The name on the Mail on Sunday byline is also worth noting: Glen Owen. That’s the same Glen Owen who pushed out the “Nigel Farage: I was hacked by Russia” story in the wake of the Reform leader’s receipt of a £5 million gift from a crypto-billionaire becoming public. And going even further back, the same Glen Owen who put his name to a fabricated story in 2022 claiming Angela Rayner used ‘Basic Instinct’ style tactics to distract Boris Johnson in the House of Commons.

Let’s take a look at how Owen constructs the latest story for Farage’s benefit:

The BBC has been hit with new allegations of bias following claims Nigel Farage has been ‘banned’ from appearing on Desert Island Discs.

A new biography claims the Reform UK leader will never be invited on to the prestigious Radio 4 show as his presence would make woke Corporation staff feel ‘unsafe’.

Producers are also said to fear a backlash from other potential guests, who may boycott the programme if it gave the populist politician a platform.

There’s that self-raising row again. The opening sentence is written as though the hit has already happened, implying that others are making the claim. But the Mail on Sunday story is the first place this claim appeared, the detail having been drip-fed to Owen by Ashcroft’s publishers, Biteback. The book, The Farage Factor, comes out in two weeks. Ashcroft claims to have a single BBC source who makes the claim, but the new story refers to “allegations” to make everything seem a little more dramatic.

The phrase “are also said to” is an important one too; “producers are also said to fear backlash from other potential guests” just means someone reckons that to be the case. It’s a way of saying, ‘this is bollocks, but I’m sure it’s bollocks that you, the reader, will be happy to accept as basically true’.

Having created the ‘row’, Owen then goes to Farage to stoke things up:

Last night, Mr Farage told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I have come to expect nothing less from the BBC – their blatant bias has been obvious for years.

‘The BBC will have a rude awakening under a Reform government’.

But the broadcaster – which has been hit by repeated claims of Left-wing bias – responded: ‘We do not ban any individuals from appearing on Desert Island Discs and that includes Mr Farage.’

If there is a blatant bias at the BBC, it is in Farage’s favour. He appeared on Question Time 38 times between 2000 and 2024. That puts him in joint 6th place with Michael Heseltine and Clare Short for most appearances on the show.

However, Heseltine racked up his total over 36 years and was an MP and then a member of the House of Lords when he was a guest; Short hit her total over 31 years, invited on first as director of YouthAid, a pressure group focused on combating youth unemployment, then as an MP from 1983 until 2010. Farage made the Top 6 in just 24 years, having spent 21 years (between 1999 and 2020) as an MEP. No other former MEPs make the highest appearances list. Farage has also been a guest on Have I Got News For You three times.

It’s not surprising that neither Owen nor Farage note his frequent appearances on the BBC over the years. The intended impression is that the Reform leader has been kept off the airwaves, his voice replaced, not like Gerry Adams’ during the Troubles with the words of an underemployed actor, but with the ribbits of a disgruntled toad. When Owen writes that the BBC “has been hit by repeated claims of Left-wing bias”, he neglects to mention where those repeated claims come from.

After the BBC’s denial — which will be taken as proof that it has something to deny by its bad faith critics — the Mail on Sunday story gets into the detail of Ashcroft’s claim:

Reports of the ban come in a forthcoming biography of the Reform leader written by former Tory deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft.

He quotes a BBC source as saying that Mr Farage ‘has effectively been blacklisted’ from the show, which has run for 84 years and was once named the greatest radio programme of all time.

The source said: ‘Farage is regarded instinctively by many BBC staff as unacceptable. At least half the staff would think Radio 4 had become an ‘unsafe space’ if he was on Desert Island Discs.

‘Nothing would be written down, it’s just classic liberal-Left BBC.

‘It’s impossible to state quite how snobbish it is, especially on this kind of programme where political bias goes unrecognised.

‘I also think they’re worried that if Farage went on, other potential guests might start a boycott.’

“Nothing would be written down” is used here to avoid the question of what proof Ashcroft or his source has of the claim. It’s a parable about the woke among us that doesn’t need evidence because it will feel true to a Mail on Sunday reader already primed to hate and distrust the BBC.

While Farage considers himself the Leader of the Opposition based on his current standing in the polls, he does not, in fact, hold that role. The person who actually does, Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, appeared on Desert Island Discs in January 2026. Sir Keir Starmer who is, unbelievably, still the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, was a guest on the show in 2020 when he was Leader of the Opposition. Sir Ed Davey, whose party has 9 times as many MPs as Reform, has also yet to feature.

The Mail on Sunday piece continues:

Earlier this month, a member of Mr Farage’s team contacted Radio 4 to ask whether he qualified for an invitation to be interviewed by host Lauren Laverne about the eight recordings, book and luxury item he would take to a fictional desert island.

They were told: ‘As we are now well into production on our latest series, we’re not currently looking for new castaways.

‘When making decisions about the very few active politicians we have on the programme, we make the bookings over quite a long time period, ensuring a range of voices.’

The BBC added it would ‘stay in touch’ and ‘revisit Nigel’s interest for a future series’.

Both Sir Keir Starmer and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch have appeared on the programme, which has shown no qualms about inviting figures from the hard Left.

So there you have it: Reform asked if Farage could be a guest; the BBC replied that it has done all its bookings for the current series and will keep him in mind. There is no ban, but the opportunity for victimhood is too delicious for Farage to ignore. Similarly, Owen’s claim that the programme has “shown no qualms about inviting figures from the hard Left” is one without evidence. A scroll through the guest lists for Desert Island Discs series past shows a preference for actors, artists, musicians, and scientists over politicians. It’s simply not a particularly politically-focused show, though it’s obvious why its soft, autobiographical approach appeals to political leaders looking for an easy bit of PR.

Go back further into Desert Island Discs history, and you’ll find it has not been averse to inviting on figures who are quite the opposite to “hard Left”. Lady Mosley, aka Diana Mitford, the widow of Oswald Mosley and lifelong fan of Adolf Hitler, was a guest in 1989. Inevitably, one of her chosen discs was Wagner’s Die Walküre. It’s a chilling but fascinating listen, an insight into the mind of an unrepentantly unpleasant person.

Would Farage be a good guest? I think it’s unlikely because he often bristles when asked to go into any detail about his personal life beyond the blustering, pint-brandishing cartoon he presents on the campaign trail. Interviewed by Rachel Cooke for The Observer back in 2015, he claimed: “I don’t listen to music, I don’t watch television, I don’t read.” Where some politicians strain to prove they have a hinterland, Farage professes to possess a wasteland, a blasted heath where only politics roams.

In 2024, during a Today programme interview, Mishal Hussein explored Farage’s complaints about British Muslims not speaking English in the street by asking him whether his own children are bilingual. He had told Nick Clegg they were in a podcast interview. Farage grumbled that it was “poor form”. Is he likely to enjoy Lauren Laverne asking about his parents or his school years with those many allegations about antisemitic taunts and Nazi sing-alongs?

Regardless, the Mail on Sunday story has had the intended effect. The Spectator asks “What’s the real reason Nigel Farage has never been on Desert Island Discs?” and concludes that it’s wokeism. The Sun tells its readers that Nigel Farage has “[blasted] BBC over ‘bias’ after claim he is ‘banned from Desert Island Discs as ‘staff would feel unsafe’”, with all those load-bearing quote marks concealing that this is the shaky claim of one anonymous source offered up by an author with a history of turning bullshit into biography. And the Telegraph’s comment section carries a piece that harrumphs, Desert Island Discs no-platforming Farage shows what’s gone wrong at the BBC. In it, Daniel West writes:

The robust liberals who ran the BBC before it embraced political correctness would have relished scrutinising Nigel Farage on its most prestigious programme. The Reithian mission was to “inform, educate and entertain”. Desert Island Discs does all three – but only if the castaways are chosen to serve the interests of the public, not the prejudices of the staff.

That’s how quickly we can go from rickety claim to certain denunciation in the modern British media. Through repetition, the idea that Farage was banned from Desert Island Discs will go from claim to fact, something that will be repeated by his fans as gospel and by the leader himself as yet more evidence of how he is more sinned against than sinner. One thing is certain: if Farage were to be cast away, his chosen luxury would be a mirror.

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