My night with the ‘most hated’ woman in Britain: As Katie Hopkins – vilified for spreading hate but hailed by her devotees as the messiah of the far-Right – takes her ‘comedy’ on tour, JANE FRYER braves a front row seat…

Perhaps Katie Hopkins’ audience is already excited after the clash with the small group of protesters, waving banners and leaflets, outside the comedy club.

Or maybe, after following her for years — in the newspapers (before she was fired), on the radio (before she was fired), on Twitter (before she was banned), and, most recently, on YouTube — they’re just excited to finally meet their heroine.

Anyway, when she takes the stage at the Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green, East London, the crowd goes wild. Especially when she cries, “These are hard times, my beloved. This country is about to say, ‘Enough,’ but you’re not alone!’ Cheering, clapping, they shout, “We love you, Katie!”

Many are just happy to be here. Not least because other theaters have canceled Hopkins’ one-woman shows after claiming she spread hatred, racism and fascist bile.

‘She was canceled in King’s Lynn! Idiots! She’s just trying to tell the truth,” says Julie, 62, from Bromley, Kent, as she sips a giant white wine to my left. ‘Nothing is off limits.’

Malcolm – a nice, quiet guy to my right – completely agrees. ‘I like her view on things. The way she can analyze all the madness and give it meaning,” he says. ‘Why are they protesting outside? She’s not a racist, she’s just saying it for all of us. You should check her out on YouTube. She’s brilliant.’

It’s hard to imagine anyone unaware of Katie Hopkins, 49, but in case her relentless efforts at self-publicity haven’t reached you, she’s the annoying blonde from series three of BBC TV’s The Apprentice in 2007 – who settled down for a final showdown with Lord Sugar, but then used the publicity to transform himself into a controversial hate figure.

Since then, after being fired from the Met Office and pictured naked in a field having sex with another woman’s husband (who eventually became hers), she has offended many by making tasteless jokes, such as about death of TV presenter Kate Garraway’s husband Derek Draper, and by insulting a nine-year-old autistic girl.

Sometimes it feels like Hopkins has drawn up a list: immigrants, “solid lesbians,” the trans community, Pakistanis, the physically disabled — whom she often calls “spazzes” in her show — anyone who is ugly or obese. As she tells us all at least twice, “I am the most forbidden woman in the world.” And she probably is. In 2018, she was arrested in South Africa for allegedly spreading racial hatred.

In 2020, she was removed from Twitter for “violations of our hateful conduct policy,” even though Elon Musk let her do that when he bought the social media site.

And in 2021 she was deported from Australia – after deliberately breaking Covid lockdown rules.

She has likened African migrants crossing the Mediterranean to cockroaches and called for gunboats to tackle them. And after the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, she called for the “final solution” – which many believed was a reference to the Holocaust.

Of course, she’s been in and out of the libel courts. After a row on Twitter, she was ordered to pay food writer Jack Monroe £131,000 in damages and costs for causing ‘serious damage’ to her reputation – and sell the family home in Devon. But that didn’t stop her. ‘It makes me freer to speak out. Now they can’t take anything with them,” she says. On behalf of what she calls “the voiceless majority,” like-minded people who “just want to be honest and be free to think whatever they want.”

So she tells jokes about how ‘ginger babies are harder to love’, how Israel’s secret service Mossad is ‘completely epic’, along with a bunch of unprintable stuff about Labor politicians, lesbians, ‘climate twats’, slavery, immigrants and the problems of Angela Rayner. pubic hair.

And the crowd roars and howls with laughter. They all follow her online and have traveled miles to be here. One woman flew from her home in Portugal.

“She’s our hero,” says a shaven-headed guy wearing a Union Jack T-shirt. ‘She’s always spot on.’

But Hopkins was never intended to become a far-right political commentator.

‘Growing up in Devon I wanted to join the army. To fight for my country,” she says. Through sponsorship at the University of Exeter with the Intelligence Corps, she signed for 35 years. But she failed to disclose that she had epilepsy, which often landed her in the hospital.

During the Sandhurst parade she suffered a seizure and was dismissed.

She moved to a finance job in New York. There she stole her first husband, who left her for his secretary the day after the birth of their second daughter.

She then appeared on The Apprentice and since then she has appeared on countless TV reality shows, written (and spoken) many inflammatory words and upset a lot of people.

“I like to think I’m still serving my country. In a different way. I’m standing up for Britain.’

The crowd here loves it. Especially when she uses the F or C word, which is about every 30 seconds. I can only pass on a fraction as so much is unprintable.

Her story is shocking, which is a shame. Because surprisingly, Hopkins has great comedic timing, a good rapport with her audience and – when she steps away from the hate – very funny. She’s natural and warm – yes, really – as she interacts with the audience and jokes about the surgery that cured her epilepsy and a traumatic time with a loofah in the shower.

But then, a few minutes later, the bile erupts with disgusting comments about the Grenfell Tower fire – ‘saddy saddy, burny burny’ – and abuse is hurled at former campaigning sub-postmaster Alan Bates.

Nobody walks out. No one says, ‘Too much!’ They laugh as they say she is good friends with Tommy Robinson (the former leader of the English Defense League, who is currently in custody) and talk about her support for the man jailed for stalking broadcaster Jeremy Vine and for the wife of the councilor jailed for inciting racial hatred on the day three girls were murdered in Southport.

God knows what makes Hopkins tick. Maybe she really thinks she is the messiah of the far right.

As the two-hour show comes to a close, her messaging goes into overdrive as she tells us that we are “family” and that the government is “trying to kill us with a thousand cuts.” ‘No matter what happens, you will always have me. You are not alone and together we are stronger.’

And there follows loud applause and a standing ovation.

Ahead of a new show, management at the Spa Pavilion in Felixstowe, Suffolk, refused to cancel it despite protests, saying: ‘If people don’t like it they don’t have to come.’ So it’s up to you.

But if jokes about people from Pakistan, ‘Dead Derek’ and those who were burned aren’t your thing, I’d say don’t go. Katie Hopkins won’t give two figs. Every show will be sold out anyway.