Nigel Farage, who has survived being runover, testicular cancer and a plane crash, is one of the most flamboyant characters in British politics. Usually pictured with a pint in his hand, the 50-year-old leader of the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) has styled himself a jovial "ordinary bloke" and "anti-politician". Nigel Paul Farage (pronounced to rhyme with barrage) was born in the southern English county of Kent, the son of an alcoholic stockbroker who left Farage's mother when he was just 5. After attending the prestigious private school Dulwich College, Farage eschewed university when he reached 18, choosing instead to follow his father into the City as a commodities trader. In his early twenties he experienced his first brush with death when he was knocked down by a car after a drunken night in the pub where he had been arguing about British-Irish relations. He survived, only to be diagnosed with testicular cancer shortly afterwards. But he overcame the illness - he has reportedly expressed "gratitude to evolution" for being provided with a spare - and went on to marry twice and father four children. His first dabble with politics came with the Conservative Party, but he left to become one of the founding members of UKIP when Britain signed the Maastricht treaty in 1992, which paved the way for greater political union and the euro currency. Charismatic and articulate, Farage quickly climbed the party ladder, becoming a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in 1999 and party leader in 2006. He resigned for a brief spell in 2009 to fight a seat in the general election the following year, an attempt which failed miserably when UKIP polled just 3 per cent. However election day did see Farage dominate the headlines when the light aircraft he was flying in crashed, after the UKIP banner it was trailing caught in its tail fin. He was pictured staggering from the wreckage, covered in blood and suffered a punctured lung and broken bones. But nothing appears able to stop Farage's onslaught on British politics. Over the past year the UKIP leader and his party have also sailed apparently unscathed through several scandals about MEPs' expenses, accusations of racism and sexism, infighting and Farage's alleged affairs. Last year the party's only female MEP, Marta Andreason, defected to the Conservatives, accusing Farage of being "anti-women" and a "Stalinist dictator". In March, another ex-UKIP MEP, Nikki Sinclair, stood up in the European Parliament to accuse Farage of using taxpayers' money to fund jobs for both his wife and a woman she said was his former mistress. Her comments were eagerly seized upon by the British media, who also questioned why the anti-immigration Farage could not employ a Brit instead of his German wife, who acts as his secretary. But most of the mud flung at Farage has failed to stick, with not so much as a dent made in UKIP's popularity in opinion polls. -- SPA 20:13 LOCAL TIME 17:13 GMT تغريد
