Nigel Farage slams Angela Merkel and hails Vladimir Putin in fresh outburst
Nigel Farage, "the man in the pub", is not known for political correctness ... or tact Reuters

Often spotted with a pint or a cigarette in hand, Farage has been described as "the man in the pub" of politics - known for stating his opinions without much consideration for political correctness or tact.

A bar philosopher, the jolly Ukip leader has inspired followers of his party - once curtly described by Prime Minister David Cameron as "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists". with his hankering to leave the European Union and cut immigration in the UK.

But this, of course, has got him into some serious scraps with his opponents - including being smacked round the head with a placard by a protester in Kent.

Today marks Nasty Nige's 50th birthday, and while he bickers with Nick Clegg over whether abandoning the EU would leave Britain as a "billy no mates", we have rounded up all of Farage's most astounding quotes to date.

Happy Birthday Nigel Farage:

Apparently he only disagrees with George Galloway on one thing: whether his local in parliament is shut: "But there's certainly only one thing I could never agree with George Galloway on. He's a teetotaller and wants to close all the bars in the House of Commons. That is just not on."

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And Putin isn't so bad, really. Earlier this week, he repeated his admiration for Vladimir Putin, saying he respected him more than the "kids" who ran Britain. The Russian president's foreign policy on Syria is "brilliant", apparently.

He has also let slip an indication of what's to come, if Ukip were to be successful at the 2015 election: "I think frankly, when it comes to chaos you ain't seen nothing yet."

What about our "unrecognisable" country? Last month, Farage claimed mass immigration was destroying the UK and turning it into a "foreign land". He cited his journey from London's Charing Cross to Hither Green as the trigger for his comments, as he hadn't heard any English spoken. It made him "uncomfortable" because he "didn't understand it".

According to Farage, the gender pay gap only exists because women who have children - and take maternity leave - are "worth less" to employers than men. Yet the city is not an "old boys club". No?

"But there's certainly only one thing I could never agree with George Galloway on. He's a teetotaller and wants to close all the bars in the House of Commons. That is just not on."
- Nigel Farage

He would also rather see the UK significantly poorer with fewer migrants. At the beginning of the year, he proposed a moratorium which would cut immigration and see economic growth drop to a lower rate of 1.9%.

He said: "If you said to me, would I like to see over the next 10 years a further five million people come into Britain and if that happened we'd all be slightly richer, I'd say, I'd rather we weren't slightly richer, and I'd rather we had communities that were united and where young unemployed British people had a realistic chance of getting a job."

Farage also disowned his party's 2010 manifesto on BBC's Daily Politics programme. He said he had "no idea" where Ukip's Trident policy had come from (their website).

And, last but definitely not least, he condemned the ban on handguns in the UK. He told the radio station LBC 97.3: "I think the ban on handguns is ludicrous." He added that if you criminalised handguns, then "only the criminals carry the guns".