Nigel Farage came back to Medway and no one threw a milkshake at him this time

Plus a new pool for Rainham, the worst fly-tipping I've ever seen, and how bad is your air?

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Nigel Farage is still a thing, apparently

Long term Medway residents will be aware of the history that these towns have with UKIP and thus the one-man political wrecking ball Nigel Farage. Back in 2014, Rochester and Strood MP Mark Reckless defected to UKIP and triggered a by-election with led to Farage and his merry band pretty much setting up camp in the town for a few weeks. At the time, the party was riding high locally, with prominent Conservative councillors defecting to the party.

This all started to fall apart in 2015 though, when Mark Reckless lost his seat to Kelly Tolhurst, and the promised UKIP council gains never materialised. Indeed, by 2019 he couldn’t even get off his bus in Rochester because residents were armed with milkshakes nearby. In the time since, we haven’t heard a great deal from local UKIP types, so it was interesting to see Nigel Farage back in town last night to host his GB News show, which apparently is a thing that exists.

Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t make a habit of watching GB News, so didn’t know what to expect from Farage’s show, though it’s easy to guess the kind of thing we might be dealing with.

Alas, it was infinitely worse. Hosted by the Warren Wood Social Club, Farage featured interviews with local figures, questions from residents, and a godforsaken music performance to finish the show. All while a local crowd who actually paid for tickets for this thing sat around watching like it’s some kind of pound shop Hootenanny. Not many things make one yearn for Jools Holland, but here we are.