Love is … a cringeworthy TV date with your racist-text sending girlfriend
Apparently deciding that his week wasn’t going badly enough, Henry Bolton agreed to spend his morning having his final few ounces of credibility ground to dust on live television.
Alongside his girlfriend, Jo Marney, Mr Bolton, the former Ukip leader, sat on the ITV sofa, trying to look solemn and dignified. Not the easiest task, when your political career has just been obliterated because you left your wife and small children days before Christmas for a 25-year-old former model who sends racist text messages.
Interviewing the pair were This Morning presenters Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby. “It’s certainly been a turbulent few months,” began Mr Schofield. For some reason, Mr Bolton and Ms Marney tittered. They were not tittering, however, when Mr Schofield read out a statement from Mr Bolton’s wife. In it, Mrs Bolton said she and her family had been “quickly forgotten”, and Mr Bolton still “hasn’t found the time to visit his children”.
Mr Bolton and Ms Marney stared at their shoes, like a pair of 12-year-olds summoned to the headmaster’s office.
Were they sorry? So they claimed. But their apologies would have sounded a lot more convincing if they hadn’t kept offering excuses. Mr Bolton complained that “this whole thing” had been “aggravated by other people feeding her stories”. Ms Marney, in turn, insisted that her texts about “negroes” and Meghan Markle “don’t reflect my real views”; she’d made her comments “before I was in the public eye”; and anyway, “Who can say they’ve never said anything offensive in private?”
“I’ve never said anything like that!” spluttered Mr Schofield. “Are you … private racists?”
Mr Bolton looked aghast. “Of course not! Absolutely of course not!” he protested, before mysteriously adding: “I’m a dyed-in-the-wool royalist!”
Is Mr Bolton is under the impression that the Royal family are black? Perhaps his girlfriend could set him straight. She appears to have strong views on the subject. Although, as she’d explained earlier, her views do not necessarily reflect her views.
The grimmest moment came at the end. Ms Willoughby asked Mr Bolton whether Ms Marney had been “worth losing your job for”.
A toothless, baby-like gurn of joy spread across Mr Bolton’s face. “Yes!” he gasped.
Ms Marney bared her teeth, in what was presumably meant to be a smile. It made her look more like a fox sighting an oblivious chicken.