LONDON — Nigel Farage has gone to war with the BBC after a radio presenter suggested he had “a relationship when he was younger with Hitler,” vowing he would not speak to the national broadcaster until it apologized for its own past “racist” content. 

Speaking to reporters at a press conference in Westminster, the Reform UK leader angrily rejected claims he had targeted antisemitic racial abuse at fellow pupils in his schooldays at the independent Dulwich College, in south London, and read out a letter from a Jewish classmate who supported him. 

The furor blew up after Radio 4 presenter Emma Barnett asked Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice about the allegations that Farage had made comments about the Holocaust to a Jewish pupil. 

Interviewing Tice on the Today program on Thursday morning, Barnett said: “Let’s talk about your leader Nigel Farage’s relationship when he was younger with Hitler.” Tice then dismissed the claims as lies.

“I thought this morning’s performance by one of your lower grade presenters on the Today program was utterly disgraceful,” Farage told a BBC reporter at the press conference on Thursday. “To frame a question around the leader of Reform’s relationship with Hitler, which is how she framed it, was despicable, disgusting beyond belief.” 

While denying he had ever racially abused anyone, Farage accused the BBC of “double standards and hypocrisy” because in the 1970s, at the time he was alleged to have made the comments, the broadcaster aired many comedy shows that contained racist humor which would now be totally unacceptable. 

He listed “homophobic” and “racist” content, listing shows such as “Are You Being Served,” “It Ain’t Half Hot Mum,” and performances by “Bernard Manning.”

“I cannot put up with the double standards of the BBC,” he said. “I want an apology from the BBC for virtually everything you did throughout the 1970s and ’80s.” 

Farage read a letter from a school contemporary which said the culture was very different in the 1970s. “Lots of boys said things they regret today,” the letter said. Farage’s comments were “offensive” sometimes, “but never with malice.”