'I've a gun loaded with eight bullets - and I'm going to kill Nigel Farage!' MICHAEL CRICK reveals the terrifying threat by the pilot who fell out with Ukip's leader after they miraculously survived a campaign trail plane crash
Yesterday, in the first part of a joint Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday serialisation of a new biography of Nigel Farage, we told how he changed the course of British history with Brexit. But, as this second edited extract explains, this very divisive politician might never have been alive to achieve it.
Over the years, many people must have wished Nigel Farage, the controversial leader of Ukip, dead.
He made enemies galore, both here and across Europe, as he fought what sometimes felt like a lone campaign to free Britain from the constraints of the EU and the diktats of Brussels.
Those who longed to see the back of him very nearly got their wish.
If they had, there is every reason to think that, in the absence of his drive and passion, Tory Prime Minister David Cameron would not have been spooked into promising an In-Out referendum to quiet the dissenters in the Conservative Party, and Brexit would never have happened.
It happened at the General Election of 2010, when, ever the iconoclast, Farage stood against the Commons Speaker, whose seat, by long Parliament tradition, went unopposed. It was a delicious prospect: Farage v John Bercow. Two of a kind.
Both have ferocious tempers; both can be ruthless; both are ‘Marmite’ figures, loved by some, detested by others. And both crave the limelight.
Farage hanging folded upside-down in the wreckage; Farage red-faced and shocked as he was helped out; Farage steadying himself against one of the aircraft’s wheels; Farage looking dazed as he stumbled away.With typical brio, when he announced his candidature, Farage promised to drink a pint in every pub in the constituency – quite a challenge given that there were 80.
He fought a typically vigorous campaign, working his charm on the voters of Buckingham.
An aide recalls visiting a pub and finding two Tory women who made loud, disparaging remarks and demanded to know what Farage was doing there. But he turned on the charisma and within half an hour they were linking arms with him and having a laugh. He thought he had a real chance of winning.
On polling day, he rose early and went to a local airfield, where Ukip aides had arranged a photo opportunity. There he met Justin Adams, pilot of a fixed-wing light aircraft that Farage later described as ‘rather like a tractor with wings’.
The idea was that the plane would fly low over Buckingham and the surrounding area, pulling a banner, with the party’s logo and the slogan ‘Vote for your country – Vote Ukip’.
Farage decided to go along as a passenger. He knew he couldn’t be seen from the ground but his plan was to receive text messages from colleagues advising where the banner could be seen to best effect.
It’s hard to see why he felt the need to undertake this task himself. The publicity benefits were limited, since broadcasters are banned from covering any campaigning on polling day. And he had flown twice before with Adams and found the experience very unpleasant.
Waiting at the airfield, he puffed on a cigarette and joked: ‘I just hope the plane doesn’t blow up and crash.’ Then, wearing his usual pin-striped suit, a purple and yellow Ukip rosette attached to the lapel, he squeezed himself on board.
But getting a banner into the sky is easier said than done. You can’t just attach it to the back of an aircraft. Rather, the plane has to take off, achieve some height, then swoop down low in a deep dive with a grapple hook dangling beneath and pick up a wire stretched between two poles, which in turn is attached to the banner. Often the pick-up operation requires several goes.
This time it took four failed attempts before, on the fifth, Adams, the pilot, announced: ‘We’ve picked up.’ He then looked back and saw all was not well.
‘Banner’s wrapped around the tail and rudder!’ he yelled. ‘This is an emergency. Mayday! Mayday!’
Farage decided to go along as a passenger. He knew he couldn’t be seen from the ground but his plan was to receive text messages from colleagues advising where the banner could be seen to best effect. It’s hard to see why he felt the need to undertake this task himself. He is pictured left while Justin Adams is seen rightAdams struggled to keep control of the aircraft and managed to keep the plane level at about 300ft as he did a circuit and looked for somewhere to crash-land.
‘Oh f***!’ cried Farage, certain they were going to die.
He said later: ‘I could not see how anything as flimsy as that plane could crash into the ground at 70 or 80mph and leave organic tissue fit to function.’
Then he remembers suddenly feeling very calm.
‘Initially, you’re filled with fear, but as the ground rushes up, a sense of resignation takes over. I just hoped it would be quick.’
Lurching from side to side, the plane descended rapidly, flew over a group of houses and cleared a hedge before nose-diving into the ground with an almighty force.
Farage says he closed his eyes, not expecting to see anything ever again. He felt a series of hard blows to his body as the aircraft took the full impact and the engine fell apart.
An eyewitness said: ‘It just fell out of the sky and flipped over on its front. It was all over in a couple of seconds. I thought they had both died.’ But no. Farage opened his eyes. ‘There is light. Good God. I am still here,’ he thought to himself as the awareness of not being dead sank in.
He was upside down, his head only a few inches above the ground. He found it difficult to breathe. He felt pain in his ribs, his back, his knees and calves, but was relieved to find he could still move his legs and toes.
Still strapped into his seat, he could see the grass right in front of his nose. His face was almost touching it. His blood was dripping on to the turf.
Then he heard the pilot say ‘fuel’ and he felt liquid seeping over his body. ‘I was going to be burned to death – my worst nightmare.’
By now help had arrived in the shape of Farage’s press man, Duncan Barkes, and a photographer. They saw his legs and the pilot’s legs dangling out of the crumpled fuselage and feared the worst.
Then they heard Farage’s voice. ‘I’m scared. Just get me out of this f***ing thing!’
Barkes undid Farage’s buckle and they lifted him out from the debris and got him onto his feet before going round to help the pilot, whose foot was trapped and who couldn’t be freed until the fire brigade arrived.
Farage staggered off across long grass a few dozen yards from the plane and took out his packet of cigarettes. He asked Barkes to light one. Barkes was reluctant because of the aviation fuel, but did as he was asked. Farage took a few drags but they only made him feel much worse. He just wanted to sink into unconsciousness.
He was in a bad way. ‘My trousers were glued with blood to my thighs and knees. My breastbone hurt like hell and expanding my chest was agonising. I was starved of oxygen. My lungs seemed full of treacle but I could not cough.’
An ambulance had now arrived and the crew kept asking questions to keep him awake. What was his name? How old was he? He gave them a V-sign, angry at them trying to stop him dropping off.
But he remained conscious for the journey to hospital, where a scan showed he had a punctured lung, two chipped vertebrae, a fractured sternum and several fractured ribs.
Going up in the aircraft with the banner had been a publicity stunt, but the crash brought more coverage than anyone could ever have wished for. Photographs from the crash site were all over social media, TV and the front pages of the papers.
Farage hanging folded upside-down in the wreckage; Farage red-faced and shocked as he was helped out; Farage steadying himself against one of the aircraft’s wheels; Farage looking dazed as he stumbled away. He was still in hospital when the Buckingham election result was declared the next day. He’d failed to oust Bercow and had come third.
Two days later, Farage left hospital and went home to Kent. Typically, he posed for another press photo, supping a pint in his local, the George and Dragon. But he was still in pain, and he has never recovered fully from his back injuries.
He was not able to play golf again, or do strenuous physical work. He would tire a lot more easily, and the nights out drinking he’d enjoyed in Brussels or Strasbourg as a Member of the European Parliament would largely be a thing of the past.
The plane crash suddenly aged him, he said, physically and mentally. Years later he would still be suffering. In the 2015 General Election campaign, people observed that he looked tired and unwell.
And no wonder. He was still dogged by health problems from the crash. His spinal injury had got worse, causing him ‘horrible’ pain and making it impossible to lift his arms more than 45 degrees.
Twice a week he went to hospital for treatment; he was still on strong sleeping pills and muscle relaxants. He said in an interview: ‘I was not ill, but I was in a lot of pain, and neuralgic pain is horrible. It is something I have got to live with, and I have got to pace myself. I think I am going to have medical treatment for the rest of my life.’
People around him believe the crash had another long-term effect, that of changing his personality. For the worse.
The idea was that the plane would fly low over Buckingham and the surrounding area, pulling a banner, with the party’s logo and the slogan ‘Vote for your country – Vote Ukip’. Farage decided to go along as a passenger
Godfrey Bloom was an old drinking friend from his days as a City trader, who had then followed him into politics and become a fellow Ukip MEP. He says: ‘Pre-2010, with Nigel, what you saw was what you got – a beery, smoking, bonhomie dude. It was fun.
‘But the plane crash had a big impact. Afterwards he became totally introverted and more difficult to deal with. Half of us left Ukip because he became a bully and was no longer fun to work with.
‘Mood swings, depressions, anti-social behaviour, all came after the 2010 crash. Babies went out with the bathwater. If you didn’t toe the party line completely, your branch was closed down.
‘Nigel went to the Stalin School of Management. Somebody might make an observation he didn’t like at a meeting, and he’d say, “Well you would say that, ’cos you’re a w***er!” You don’t treat people like that if you expect loyalty. He wouldn’t do that before the crash.’
It was during this period that Farage fell out with Neil Hamilton, the former Tory MP who had joined Ukip. ‘He was a chaotic influence,’ Hamilton recalls. ‘He meddled in minutiae. All he wanted was acolytes – and a security team like he was Vladimir Putin, to make him look important.’
But Farage has an entirely different take on the effect of the plane crash on him. He says it made him more determined than ever to pursue his goal of extricating Britain from the EU.
The crash – and his almost miraculous survival – made him reassess things philosophically. He vowed never again to get obsessed with trivialities and to concentrate instead on what mattered.
And he did, to some extent. He devoted more time to leisure pursuits – cricket, fishing, a quiet evening at home – and spent time with his family, including his young daughters, by then aged ten and four. ‘I am, I think, soberer, more reflective,’ he wrote in an updated paperback version of his memoirs (suitably renamed Flying Free). ‘Good God, I might even be growing up a bit.
‘I consider myself very lucky to be alive,’ he said. ‘And if before that crash, in politics I was unafraid to take on the Establishment, since that day I’ve been fearless.’
THERE was, though, another consequence of that crash, one that put Farage in more danger. The pilot, Justin Adams, threatened to kill him.
Like Farage, Adams had survived the crash and the official air accident report, published six months later, didn’t blame him. But he couldn’t work while awaiting the outcome and his mental health was badly affected.
Insurers refused to pay for repairs to his aircraft until the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) investigation was completed. His business collapsed, as did his marriage. He blamed Farage for his plight and felt he’d lost a chance to make some money by selling his story to the press, having been advised not to do so.
Over a period of three days, Adams made persistent threats to both Farage and the CAA investigator. He had a gun, he told them. He also rang the police to say he had a weapon and enough ammunition to kill Farage, the crash investigator and himself.
‘I’ve lost my wife, my house, my child,’ he said in the recorded call. ‘I’ve only got eight bullets, but I only need four.’
In 2011, Adams was prosecuted on five charges of threatening to kill, and Farage was a prime prosecution witness. The politician told jurors how, a few days after the official report had absolved the pilot, he’d phoned Adams.
‘He was really, really angry. He said, “You sold your story to a Sunday newspaper but you’ve done nothing for me.” ’
Farage said that, out of concern for Adams, he drove to see him at his home and they had lunch at a village pub.
They were accompanied by a psychiatric nurse after Adams had told him on the phone that he planned to kill Farage.
Over lunch, Adams continued to be belligerent. He told Farage: ‘I used to be in Special Forces and no one’s safe. Do you understand?’
Later, when Adams seemed more calm and rational, he reportedly told Farage: ‘I was going to kill you today, but I decided not to. But I can’t preclude it from happening in the future.’
Farage explained to the jury that he was often prey to ‘all sorts of crackpots and threats’ and usually ignored them. This case was different because it was ‘specific’.
Adams was found guilty. Having already spent six months in custody, he was given a two-year community order instead of a prison sentence.
His threats had been a ‘cry for help’, the judge decided. It wasn’t reported at the time, but Farage had written a letter to the judge to urge him to be lenient.
In 2013, 48-year-old Adams was found dead at his home. He had committed suicide.
The plane crash was not the first time Nigel Farage had diced with death.
In 1985, as an ambitious 21-year-old earning good money in the City of London, it was late as usual when he got off the train at Orpington station in Kent on his way home.
That day he’d enjoyed a long lunch at an Indian restaurant and then spent the evening arguing in the pub about the new Anglo-Irish Agreement which Margaret Thatcher had just signed. He felt it was a betrayal of the Unionists in the North.
Leaving the station, he lit a cigarette and walked along to a pelican crossing. ‘I grasped the lamp’s stalk and swung myself into the street,’ he wrote in his memoirs. ‘I remember nothing more.
A Volkswagen Beetle braked, but it was too late. The car hit Farage and he was thrown into the air, over the vehicle and on to the kerb. He landed on his head and woke up in hospital with head injuries and his left leg suspended in traction. He was warned he might lose it.
He spent two months in hospital, and his leg recovered, though it remained in plaster for almost a year. Thereafter he also suffered from tinnitus, a ringing in the ears, from the head injuries.
Then, remarkably, within a year came his second brush with death.
In his local, The Queen’s Head in the Kent village of Downe, he had ordered his customary pint, only to be struck by an excruciating pain on his left side. It shot from near his kidney, through his stomach and into his groin.
Still in agony two days later, he took himself to hospital, where doctors concluded he had testicular torsion, whereby the spermatic cord twists and cuts off the blood supply to the testicle. It’s treated by untwisting the testicle, followed by surgery.
But just as he was about to be taken into the operating theatre, a different doctor challenged the diagnosis. It was merely an infection, he said, which could be treated with antibiotics. There was no need for an operation.
Yet the problem persisted. Farage’s testicle swelled bigger than a lemon and grew harder, and he found it hard to walk or go into work. His GP referred him to a consultant, who merely prescribed more antibiotics.
Farage was very distressed, but his boss at work advised him to use the firm’s health insurance scheme to get a second opinion. He saw a Harley Street specialist, who arranged an ultrasound scan.
The result was a diagnosis of testicular cancer. His left testicle would have to be removed.
‘I didn’t need two,’ he wrote later, ‘but I had quite liked the sense of security which the extra one had provided. Nonetheless, when they offered me an artificial one to supply me with greater social confidence, I refused.’
But this wasn’t the end of his troubles. There was the possibility of secondary tumours in his stomach and lungs. He was terrified, thinking he was riddled with cancer.
He was given a full body scan, and for 48 hours feared the worst – that, at 22, his life would end before it had barely started. ‘It felt so unfair. I hadn’t done any of the things I wanted to do. Those two days were torture.’
Farage was in his room, smoking, drinking and on the phone placing bets as he watched horse-racing on TV when his oncologist turned up. He brought good news. The cancer hadn’t spread.
Farage recalled: ‘He stared at me and said, “Well, Mr Farage, after an experience like this, many of my patients spend the rest of their life drinking carrot juice, and some go the other way. And I suspect you’re a member of the latter category.” ’
Even then, however, he wasn’t totally in the clear. He had to have blood tests twice a week and if his protein count rose, he would have to have chemotherapy. It was a worry, but all went well. The tests became less frequent and the cancer didn’t return.
And having only one testicle made no difference. ‘He just couldn’t get over the fact that he was able to have children,’ his mother later revealed.
For a biographer searching for what fired Nigel Farage’s rockets and propelled him into politics, it was probably these two occasions, when he stared death in the face.
‘No one who’s been through what I went through could ever say that it is out of their mind totally.
‘I’m very much a fatalist. Life’s for the living. You’ve got to follow your heart and I won’t pretend that didn’t shape my decision to leave business and enter politics.’
© Michael Crick, 2022
Adapted from One Party After Another, by Michael Crick, published by Simon and Schuster at £25. To order a copy for £22.50, go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. Free UK delivery on orders over £20 until February 13, 2022.
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