Nigel Farage endured a car crash live radio interview with LBC presenter James O'Brien on Friday morning. It began with the Ukip leader challenged over the "avalanche" of controversial comments made by his candidates.
One Ukip candidate was revealed to have made remarks about what would happen if he "shot one poofter". Farage said he was "perfectly happy for us to have a debate about our idiots" but complained that other political parties were not subject to the same level of scrutiny as his was.
As the interview continued Ukip communications director Patrick O'Flynn intervened in an attempt to get the programme shut down. "We had an agreement and you've massively overrun," he said. But his protests were ignored.
Farage said it was unfair for the media to hold up a "handful of people" who made racist or homophobic comments as being representative of Ukip. And he insisted he could not be expected to know the views of every Ukip politician as he did not run the "day-to-day management" of the party.
O'Brien also took Farage to task over his previous remarks that he felt uncomfortable when he heard people speaking languages other than English. And he was asked whether that meant he felt awkward when his German wife spoke German not English, he replied: "I don't suppose she speaks it on the train."
Farage was also quizzed over why it was acceptable to say, as he has, that people should be nervous about Romanians moving in next door to them. Asked what the difference was between Germans and Romanians was, Farage said cryptically: "You know what the difference is."
O'Brien asked Farage why he was so concerned about the number of bilingual children in London school, given his own children speak both English and German.
Ukip was embroiled in another race row today after it emerged that one of its local election candidates has described Islam as a "totalitarian ideology" that is "against everything modern Britain stands for".
Labour said the "deeply offensive" views - contained in an email apparently sent last year to the London council on which Heino Vockrodt wishes to sit - undermined Farage's insistence that he did not lead a racist party.
In an angry diatribe complaining about an alleged planning breach by "the Afghan community" in Brent, north London, Vockrodt said parts of the borough resembled Afghanistan's Helmand province. Political correctness was preventing the council taking action, he alleged, "for fear of being called racists, when, just like in all the other cases where Muslims are grooming children to be sex slaves under the eyes of the authorities, the council does nothing".
It is a fresh embarrassment for Ukip as it tries to fend off racism allegations following a series of scandals involving candidates, and a controversial poster campaign warning about Europeans coming to take UK jobs.
Farage has sought to dispel the image, accusing the media of stirring up hatred against Ukip and appearing on a platform alongside a number of the party's black and ethnic minority candidates.
But one of the party's prominent British Asian Ukip supporters has quit, accusing Farage of playing the race card to win votes. Sanya-Jeet Thandi, a youth member who was previously put up to defend the party in television interviews, said its current direction was "terrifying".
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