“It’s absolutely outrageous to suggest that, when at school, I ever referred to any fellow students who happened to be Jewish as ‘Shylock’,” declared far-right MP and leader of the Regressive UK Party Nigel Fromage today, as he defended himself against allegations from fellow schoolmates that, when a pupil at exclusive private school Dullard College, he had engaged in racist language and abused and intimidated students from minorities with praise for Adolf Hitler and his works. “Look, as everyone who knows me will tell you, there’s no way that I’d call some Jewboy a ‘Shylock’ – every educated person knows that the correct anti-Semitic term is ‘Kike’. Just as I most certainly wouldn’t have called a black boy in my year a ‘wog’ – that term is more correctly used against Arabs. For blacks it should be ‘Nig Nog’, ‘Coon’ or similar, while ‘wop’ is reserved for Italians, ‘Dago’ for Spaniards and ‘spics’ for Hispanic types in general. Really, these things should be included in the National Curriculum to ensure that today’s youth is properly educated in such matters.” According to Fromage, even if he had used such terminology it would only have been ‘harmless schoolboy banter’ of the kind heard in playgrounds up and down the country to this day. “None of it was intended to directly offend and insult,” he claimed. “It was all meant in jest, you know, like when you call a chap with glasses ‘four eyes’ or someone with a prominent proboscis ‘big nose’. All quite harmless. Or it would have been if I’d actually said it, which I most probably didn’t. I mean, who could possibly remember what was said to them forty or more years ago, especially if it was a harmless bit of racist abuse spoken in jest?”
Fromage has also been accused of parading around in an SS uniform at meetings of the school’s Combined Cadet Forces (CCF) and attending a Christmas party dressed as Hitler. “It wasn’t even a fancy dress party,” recalls Jim Chunk, who was in the year below the MP at Dullard College. “He just turned up dressed in a Nazi uniform, with a smudge of black boot polish just under his nose. He goose-stepped about and threw Nazi salutes, shouting ‘Sieg Heil’ at everyone.” In another Christmas related incident, Fromage allegedly worked part-time in a Santa’s grotto one Christmas while in sixth form. “He thought it hilarious to pull off his Santa hat and beard, to reveal that he was wearing that fake Hitler moustache again, not to mention an Iron Cross, throw a Nazi salute and shout ‘Goodwill to all men, except the Jews and the wogs!’ or ‘Gas a Jew for Christmas!’, while laughing uproariously,” claims Chunk. “There were complaints from parents when the presents he handed out to kiddies, when unwrapped, turned out to be copies of Mein Kampf.”
Again, Fromage has denied the allegations, calling them ‘gross exaggerations’ of the truth. “I won’t deny that I liked dressing up – lots of teenagers do. Nowadays, they’d just call it ‘cosplay’,” he asserted. “It would also be completely inaccurate to describe the uniform I wore to the CCF as an SS uniform – it was quite clearly an SA Brownshirt uniform – an organisation that preceded the existence of the SS and was led by Ernst Rohm, an openly gay man. I was merely trying to celebrate the inclusivity of the Nazi movement compared to the CCF, which, at that time, wouldn’t accept openly homosexual boys into its ranks. People really need to educate themselves on such things. I honestly don’t see what the fuss is about – these days you have boys attending school in bloody dresses and full make up, for God’s sake and nobody bats an eyelid. Now, that’s outrageous, if you ask me.” Fromage also batted away criticisms of his boyhood admiration of Hitler. “Look, people fixate far too much on his politics – if you can get beyond that, then I think you’ll find that he was actually a fascinating and talented chap – have you seen his watercolours, for instance?” he asks, adding that, as an adult, he obviously no longer idolises the Nazi dictator. “Clearly, since then, I’ve broadened my education of art and, whilst still appreciating his works, realise that there are far better artists out there.”
Fromage, though, has his supporters, with fellow former Dullard College student and classmate Dick Tick telling the media that in the years the two had studied together, he had never heard the MP abuse anyone, racially or otherwise. “It’s absolutely ridiculous to try and characterise Nigel as some kind of racist,” he said. “Nothing could be further from the truth. I remember that when we were at school, he went out of his way to make the foreign-looking students feel at home, organising welcome parties for them, even.” Jim Chunk also remembers these parties, but has a very different recollection of them. “I seem to recall that they involved Fromage and his gang of thugs throwing eggs at them, or shoving their faces into their food in the refectory at meal times,” he says. “As for that Dick Tick, I remember him as the fat bastard who used to dress up as Hermann Göring to Fromage’s Hitler. I seem to recall that he was kicked out of the college when he tried making Zyklon gas in the chemistry lab – he was planning to secrete it in a local phone box and convert it into a gas chamber. The idea was that anyone ‘ethnic loooking’ tried to use it, raising the phone receiver would lock and seal the door, then release the gas.”
Following the publicity surrounding the racism allegations against Fromage, he has found himself confronted by another ex-pupil from Dullard College. “When I first arrived at Dullard College, Fromage – who was several years above me – confronted me at the gates and asked me where I was from,” explains Charles N’Golla. “He seemed quite annoyed when I told him that I was from Croydon – his left eye started twitching – so he then asked where my parents were from and when I said ‘Brighton’, he went red in the face and bellowed ‘Well, Africa’s that way!’ while pointing vaguely in the direction of Wales. Not only was the man a bigot, but he was bloody stupid into the bargain.” N’Golla, accompanied by a TV news crew, confronted Fromage this week as he left the Regressive UK Party HQ in London, pointing out to him that his name was clearly French, saying ‘I think you’ll find that France is that way, Mr Fromage’, whilst pointing in the correct direction.
