Nigel Farage: One of my 'big regrets' is not spending more time with my daughters

It turns out the Ukip leader isn’t completely self-satisfied, after all

Sorry Nigel Farage, but the Red Cross want nothing to do with Ukip (Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)

In a rare human moment, Nigel Farage has revealed his biggest regret on Channel 4’s Gogglebox.

No, it has nothing to do with his questionable views on immigration or breastfeeding; it concerns his children.

The Ukip leader, who battled with Russell Brand last week on Question Time, said that he missed spending time with his daughters by focusing on his political career.

He has four children – two sons with his former wife, Samuel and Thomas, and two daughters with his current wife, Victoria and Isabelle.

“So I had time for the kids as they were growing up, the boys. And I guess my daughters have seen less of me than they probably should have done.”

His eldest son, Samuel, is an Exeter graduate and joined him at a spring conference his father was speaking at in March 2013. Thomas Farage is a city trader and was last year given a police caution, having been arrested for being drunk and disorderly in the Square Mile in April. They’re both in their early Twenties. His daughters are both under the age of 15.

He admits that his family life has been put under strain due to his job.

“People who tend to be very successful in some aspects of their lives fail in others,” he said in August last year.

“I have spent far too little time with my children and family.”

He said that he failed to give them the “sense of stability” that they would have had with two parents.

“In an ideal world children benefit from having some sense of stability with preferably two parents and not one,” he said.

“And that really, for more than the last decade, has not been the case with me.”

He admitted that he probably wouldn’t end up being Prime Minister – but even if he was offered it, he wouldn’t take the role anyway. Or so he claims.

“There are two types of people in politics: those who want to be something and those who want to do something. I want to do something,” he said. “Changing things in the country and changing the debate really interests me.”

Farage also discussed his ‘carpe diem’ approach to life. He survived a plane crash, a traffic accident and a bout of testicular cancer.

“I've had three good goes at dying,” he said. “I'm still here, live life to the full.”