UKIP - The Millwall of British politics?

"I'm UKIP and Millwall," a man in Ramsgate told Nigel Farage today.

The UKIP leader laughed appreciatively.

He knows what the fans at The Den chant: "No one likes us. We don't care."

When I ask Mr Farage whether his party was becoming the Millwall of British politics, he laughed and said: "Perhaps we are the Millwall... I think in Westminster we're loathed and feared."

He was feeling defiant the day after appearing to say he'd been wrong to say that people were right to be worried if a group of Romanians moved next door.

On a half dozen occasions in an interview I gave him the opportunity to apologise, but he refused.

It was only when I asked him if it would be right to say that you should be worried if Nigerians or Jamaicans or Irish people were your neighbours that his position started to shift.

'Under the carpet'

People, I reminded him, had once put up sign saying "No blacks, no Irish here". So was he saying "No Romanians?"

It was then that the apology came: "If I gave the impression in that interview that I was discriminating against Romanians then I apologise certainly for that."

His case is that he has been right to point out that the UK's borders are open, right to say that even criminals can come here and right to say that there is a particular problem with organised Romanian gangs

"I do not wish for people to feel in a discriminatory manner towards Romanians. But I do say there is a very real problem here, that everybody else has run away from, brushed under the carpet - the whole organised crime element and the impact that has had on London and other parts of the country. That is a serious issue."

So, what did he say he had been wrong to say last night? Simply the phrase "You know what the difference is", which he used in his interview with James O'Brien on LBC on Friday when he was asked about the difference between Germans living next door or Romanians.

"I am apologising for not taking the question full on and for giving the impression that by saying 'You know what I mean' there was somehow an agenda underneath."