Show caption ‘A two-and-a-half hour lunch date? But Tommy – it’s half-term!’ Illustration: Nick Oliver Lost in showbiz There’s no such thing as a free lunch? Try telling that to Tommy Robinson The EDL founder lamented the impact of legal action on his family after being bailed this week. Then he spent an afternoon during half-term dining at parliament with Ukip bigwigs Marina Hyde @MarinaHyde Thu 25 Oct 2018 12.44 EDT Share on Facebook

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In bygone days, given the modest height of many of Hollywood’s leading men, certain of them would stand on a box to give themselves the requisite dominance in scenes with female co-stars. However, when he made Boy On a Dolphin with Sophia Loren, Alan Ladd’s ego was so fragile that instead a trench was dug for Loren and she avoided dwarfing him that way.

I was reminded of this level of star-pandering by Tommy Robinson’s gig outside the Old Bailey this week, at which a full stage had been erected for the Stone Island Roderick Spode. The English Defence League founder’s narcissism is now so extreme that I am surprised he drew attention to his stature by agreeing to the structure. Surely a pit should have been dug for his crowd instead?

That said, it would have denied us the mirthless irony of Robinson literally being given a platform. At this point in his manically overexposed career, Robinson enjoys the sort of “silencing” that most international movie stars can only dream of. He makes so many head-to-head media appearances that he can barely replace the gaffer tape of martyrdom across his mouth between them. It’s an eye-catching look, the tape – although I prefer to think of it as a backstreet gastric band.

To any Robinson supporters still wetting their pants over his being “silenced”, meanwhile, I can only say: do you live off-grid in some remote crofter’s hut with no electricity in the outermost Hebrides? If not, would you like me to come round to your house and show you how to work your telly and your computer? Robinson is like a relentless barrage of viral pop-up windows. The only way to stop seeing him is to pull the plug, ultimately on the national grid. (Incidentally, although his real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, this article will refer to him by his chosen moniker, “Tommy Robinson”. To get your own EDL name, take your favourite rock opera and your favourite Neighbours family. His is Tommy Robinson. Mine is Jesus Christ Superstar Mangel. Cop that, antifa.)

Anyway, back to Robinson’s LIVE! FROM! THE! OLD! BAILEY! PAVEMENT! personal appearance on Tuesday, at which his contempt case was referred to the attorney general. It can never be overstated quite how little of a toss Robinson has given about the victims of grooming gangs, but those who doubt the fact should consider that he is serially willing to collapse their trials by acting in a manner that he knows is in contempt of court. Sorry, girls – you don’t mind going through the whole horror show again, do you? Only I’ve got some pissy look-at-me point to prove that risks you having to do just that.

As befits a man who is being silenced, there was a soundsystem and microphone and speech outside the Old Bailey, for the assembled throng and all the media organisations in attendance. “I shouldn’t have to face another trial,” whined Robinson. “I’ve been here three times with a prison bag. I’ve kissed my kids goodbye three times.”

Ah yes, the much-referenced Robinson kids. Of all the distasteful aspects of his most recent prison release (the one over the bungled contempt of court conviction, not the one for mortgage fraud), for me the worst element was the setting up of a camera to film Robinson’s reunion with two of his children in their own home. What you would have imagined should have been the day’s most intensely private moment was carefully staged and filmed by someone or other in his entourage. It is almost unwatchably intrusive. Robinson’s young son in particular is absolutely beside himself with emotion, yet the camera coolly continues to film. And why wouldn’t it? It’s business. Within hours, this moment had been packaged and released for political purposes, with the #prouddad apparently keen to put it to work for him.

But as Robinson very much wanted the world to know on Tuesday: “I’ve kissed my kids goodbye three times.” Well, quite. And, given everything you have said, you will surely be wanting to rush back to them, to give them the good news of your non-incarceration and at least temporarily relieve the unquantifiable emotional stress your entirely voluntary antics put them under. No? What’s that you say? A two-and-a-half hour lunch date? But Tommy – it’s half-term! What could possibly be preferable to a day with your children that you thought you might not have?

What turned out to be the priority for Robinson was a long lunch in the House of Lords with the former Ukip leader Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the current Ukip leader, Gerard Batten (hair by Lego), and various hangers-on, including Katie Hopkins’s organ-grinder, Rebel Media founder Ezra Levant. He is Canadian, so picture the usual Islamophobe, but mounted.

Since snatched pictures of the luncheon party appeared in the Sun, that old snowflake Batten professed himself infuriated by the claim that it was “boozy”. Wine was certainly served, but Batten explained “it was not a boozy lunch – the booze flowed at the Red Lion in Whitehall after lunch”. Something something something MSM.

Like me, you will be pleased to find your taxes subsidising such merriment and enchanted to know it is only Lord Pearson’s second invitation to the Lords for Robinson since March. But who is his lordship? The last time I clapped eyes on him was in person, during the 2010 general election. He was leader of Ukip back then, between a couple of Nigel Farage’s stints. I went to Ukip’s manifesto launch, at which it became clear that Lord Pearson had not even bothered reading the manifesto. He came across as precisely the sort of Old Etonian patrician dullard against which Ukip affects to set itself. His wife stood as a parliamentary candidate in Kensington and Chelsea in that election – I assume it was a toss-up between there and Grimsby – and she garnered a just-shy-of-adequate 754 votes.

Fastforward to the present day and, from his appearance in the photos published in the Sun, Lord Pearson now uncannily resembles Sven-Göran Eriksson circa 2005. Indeed, given the grainy, snatched quality of them, one’s reflexive assumption is that his lordship is talking to a disguised Mahzer Mahmood about taking the Villa job in the event of a Dubai consortium buying the club.

The reality, alas, is likely to be less noble-minded, although Eriksson and Pearson arguably have the endless pursuit of even more money in common. During the expenses scandal, Pearson was discovered to have designated his Scottish estate as his primary residence, although for tax purposes his multimillion-pound London townhouse was listed as his principal private residence. Thus he avoided having to pay capital gains tax on the latter when it was sold in 2007, at the same time as having claimed more than £100,000 of taxpayers’ money between 2001 and 2007 for “overnight subsistence” in the capital.

Indeed, perhaps this sort of thing is what he and Robinson talked of between courses at the House of Lords on Tuesday. According to a report in the Times this week, Robinson has recently moved into a large, gated, £950,000 house in Bedfordshire. I wonder if he needed a mortgage? I am not a comprehensive mortgage form expert, but I would guess that “served nine months for mortgage fraud” is not the character reference Nationwide tends to be looking for.

Where does Robinson – once a tanning salonista by day – get his money? It remains unclear. His former assistant told the Sunday Times that he made his income from individual donations. What we do know is that he and his team are forever running appeals for legal costs and so on, into which people with rather less money seem to pay.

Then there are cheerleaders such as Levant, who crowdfunded the costs of covering “real reports on Tommy”. Rebel Media estimated that covering this week’s few minutes outside the Old Bailey would cost $17,000 (£13,200). I know! Who is their reporter – The Rock? Last year, Robinson ran an appeal for £100,000 to build a studio. The target was met, there was a filmed “site visit” a year ago with promises it would be ready “in a week or two”, but most of his videos still seem to be recorded at home.