Starring Porridge's Kevin Bishop

Kevin Bishop is to play the Ukip leader in the BBC Two one-off Nigel Farage Gets His Life Back.

The 30 minute fly-on-the-wall mockumentary will combine pieces to camera with footage following ‘the day-to-day reality of being Nigel Farage’ – a character that has been described as a ‘cross between Basil Fawlty and Enoch Powell’.

Bishop said: “I’m delighted to be playing a character as colourful as Farage. He’s a gift to parody and I’m looking forward to bringing previously unseen aspects of his life to the screen.’

The title comes from the line Farage said when he announced he was standing down from Ukip after Britain voted to leave the EU.

Produced by Zeppotron, the 30-minute show is being written by Alan Connor and Shaun Pye, who also penned the snooker comedy-drama The Rack Pack in which Bishop played promoter Barry Hearn.

Executive producer Peter Holmes said: ‘This project couldn’t feel more relevant. Nigel Farage has had a huge part to play in the momentous political events of recent times, and everybody has an opinion of him. We hope we can create a lot of laughter while painting a portrait of such a divisive figure as he fills the empty hours of retirement.’

The show will contrast the colourful ‘public Nigel’, bantering over a few pints of beer, unencumbered by political correctness, and ‘private Nigel’, the man behind the facade, at home, eating bangers and mash watching Pointless and insisting that he doesn’t miss the limelight.

This weekend, Bishop can also be seen in BBC One’s new Porridge episode, following in Ronnie Barker’s footsteps, playing the grandson of the original Fletch.

At the Edinburgh International Television Festival yesterday, he said he had avoided watching the original version for fear he’d end up impersonating Barker.

‘Because I mimic people, I think I would have ended up doing a Ronnie Barker impression,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to get that sparkle across, without being a direct copy.’

He admitted that he was initially ’scared’ of taking on the role as ‘I'm a comic actor so my main emotions are fear and negativity.

‘But I was flattered they would trust something so lovely to me. I was a bit reticent, but once I knew [original writers] Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais were involved I thought: "This is Porridge" – and they are such good writers.

‘I would question jokes at the start, but the laughter in Salford [where the episode was recorded] just filled the whole room.It was a real masterclass.’

BBC comedy chief Shane Allen admitted. ‘The ghost of Ronnie Barker was in the room’ but said it was Clement and La Frenais who made it work.

‘They are keepers of the flame - these are their characters and they've earned the right to do it,’ he said. ‘They didn't need to do this for the money, they just wanted to go back to this world. And they’ve done a brilliant job.

Producer Richard Webb: added: ‘It was a scary prospect, but the fact it was them [Clement and La Frenais] give us permission to do it. It felt like totally valid thing to be doing.’

He said that despite the cast change and the update – the new Fletch has been locked up for cyber crimes – ‘you can feel it's the same show.’

And he said that in the editing, ‘the trouble I had was in getting rid of laughs, not adding them, because the studio audience were laughing over jokes.’

• Porridge airs on BBC One on Sunday at 9.30pm.

Published: 25 Aug 2016