‘What I don’t like about social media is it’s always about dividing people’, Thomas Skinner declared on Clacton-on-Sea’s Question Time last night.
‘I try and spread a bit of positivity and a bit of love, you know’, he continues.
It wasn’t long before he was accused of hypocrisy. A post by X user @NFFC_owen last night shared that, only one month ago, Tom Skinner sent a message to Zack Polanski on X, calling him a ‘bellend’.
It was in response to a Green Party campaign video, where they spread their message dubbed in Bangla, to Bangladeshi communities, after having released it in Urdu a few days previously.
Skinner replied, saying, ‘Zach. Put it in any language you want. You’re still a massive bell end who ain’t got a clue about the real world’.
I wondered if this was that ‘love’ he was harping on about last night.
It would have been funny if it weren’t so tragic.
A lot of people on X were baffled by the decision for Question Time to platform Skinner.
After all, this is a man who, in 2011, was convicted of handling £40,000 in stolen goods and possessing 2,000 diazepam tablets.
Whose business, the Fluffy Pillow Company, allegedly obtained a £50,000 COVID-19 bounce back loan in 2020 which he never paid back.
He wanted to sue the BBC because he was voted off Strictly Come Dancing almost instantly.
When the quality of the content they release is this low, I really can’t help but conclude that Question Time isn’t worth airing anymore.
And it’s actually something I’ve been saying for a long time now.
In fact, I said it to a producer who emailed me in 2020, asking me if I wanted to consider being a panellist.
Having watched a racist row erupt on the show the previous Thursday, I responded with my thoughts: ‘The show essentially aired and normalised racism. It’s not something that should be debated’, telling him that I felt that control was slipping into the hands of fascists and that we were happily giving them space to exist.
In his reply, the producer said: ‘I’d like to reassure you that the whole team makes every effort to make QT a safe and welcoming space for everyone, regardless of background. We also endeavour to reflect the diversity of the nation as a whole in our panels and audiences across the series.’
Regardless, my feelings on this have not changed.
As I watched Tom Skinner, someone who has recently joined the hard-right political party Reform UK, talk about how to help young people, I wondered why this convicted criminal was given the space that, say, a youth worker could have taken.
Or literally anyone else.
To then later find out he was paid £2,000 for his appearance was a bitter icing on the cake. For his lamentations on the plight of the working class – talking about how people can’t afford to ‘enjoy a pint of beer’ or ‘take their kids to the football’ – he pocketed £2k.
I would be remiss not to add at this point that the house Skinner grew up in sold for £2.5million in 2017, and that he attended a prestigious Brentford private school.
Anyway, hopefully he uses that to pay back some of that loan his firm is said to have avoided.
The Question Time controversy didn’t end there. Earlier in the day, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage had claimed on X that he was unable to appear on the show that night because he was not allowed to attend an episode filmed in his own constituency, Clacton-on-Sea (confirming here in case Farage, who seems to have forgotten, sees this).
Labour MP Mike Tapp quoted Farage’s post, questioning his claim: ‘I seem to remember being on Question Time, a few months ago, in Dover…my constituency’.
I suspect we were all pretty surprised when Question Time posted a very out-of-character response, coming to Farage’s defence.
‘There is a longstanding policy on Question Time not to invite MPs on in their local constituencies unless it’s for a single-issue special programme. This is why Mike Tapp MP appeared on the panel in his constituency for the immigration special in Dover.’
Farage, with his divisive, provocative stances on issues like immigration, is a regular guest on the show, having appeared almost 40 times since his first appearance in 2000.
For Question Time to take to social media to come to Farage’s defence so quickly was, to me, alarming. I don’t recall it ever happening so quickly, or so enthusiastically, before.
I appreciate we live in politically polarised times, and that people on both sides will believe that their opposing ideology benefits from favouritism, but to me, this does not suggest impartiality.
I can’t help but feel like Question Time has all but lost its credibility and meaning.
For a long time now, it simply gives a platform to hateful speech. I don’t believe that’s debate, it’s vitriol posing as entertainment.
Question Time is a mess that needs, at the very least, a complete overhaul. We have better places for £2,000 to go than into the pockets of people like Tom Skinner.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jessica.aureli@metro.co.uk.
Share your views in the comments below.
