It's a balmy British evening and Nigel Farage is holding court in the beer garden of a small, seaside pub in the east coast town of Clacton-on-Sea in Essex.
He's wearing a three-piece suit, but the former commodities trader tries to be the everyman — downing pints with the locals and talking football ahead of England's latest match at the Euro 2024 tournament.
Farage pivots the conversation to politics, and they are all in absolute agreement about two things: that "Britain is broken" and that its leaders should "stop the boats".
"There's too many people, that's what it comes down to," Nigel Farage says.
"We literally can't cope."
Nigel Farage is the leader of right-wing political party Reform UK.
Britain's July 4 election will be his eighth attempt to win a seat in parliament, and pollsters say he's likely to do it this time.
And while there have been several campaign controversies, they have only translated into small dips in the opinion polls.
What does Nigel Farage stand for?
The 60-year-old came to prominence helping to sell Brexit to millions of British voters.
He is a long-time political campaigner, a Euro sceptic, a friend of Donald Trump and came third in the 2023 series of I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! filmed in Australia.
After two years of record levels of immigration in the UK, Farage's party's signature policy is to freeze all non-essential immigration and stop the small boats with migrants crossing the English Channel.
Reform UK claims these steps would boost wages, protect public services, end the housing crisis and cut crime.
"We have a shortage of housing [and] healthcare, you know we have a real problem," Farage tells the ABC.
"It's diminishing the quality of life, our kids can't buy houses, rents are up.
"It's all demand and supply, the population is exploding and ... now we are at crisis point."
Farage's brand of politics has struck a chord in Clacton.
"I think he's a very good man, I like the way he speaks, he's a straight-shooter," Madeleine Fitch tells the ABC.
"He says it how it is, and he upsets a lot of people because of that, but there's a lot of people that like him for it."
Retired boilermaker Bernie Shirley says Farage has his vote.
"We can't have [immigrants] keep flooding into this country, it pulls us down," he says.
"We was known as Great Britain.
"You can forget about the 'great' now."
A town past its prime
Clacton doesn't usually get much attention.
The pubs and cafes don't have many customers, there are several shuttered shops, and amusement rides on the old pier sit idle most of the day.
Unemployment is higher than the national average, small businesses are struggling, and the internet and phone reception frequently drop out in the town that's two hours from London.
There were high hopes that Brexit in 2016 would fix things, with almost 70 per cent of people in the area voting to leave the EU.
Almost eight years on, they feel forgotten.
Even though Farage was a prominent Brexiteer, the fact that he is paying particular attention to Clacton now means some here see him as a lifeline.
Others believe he is simply using the community so he can achieve his political goals.
Retiree Mandy Painting, 69, says she thinks he is a "bit of a clown".
"He's all talk and no action, he's very good on the podium telling people what he's going to do, but whether he achieves it is another matter," Mrs Painting says.
Mother of five Georgina Giltinane says Farage is the only candidate she has seen campaigning Clacton, but she remains wary.
"If he does get elected, is that it? Or will he vanish? Because that's what everyone else has done for this town — they have promised us the world and then they have left and been nowhere to be seen," the 31-year-old says.
A large wall across the road from the beach has been plastered with graffiti saying, "Nigel Farage is a posh self-serving snake oil salesman".
Unemployed man Aaron Price, 27, tells the ABC he follows politics closely and doesn't trust Farage.
"He's got all sorts of funny ideas — very extreme ideas — and I think realistically he just doesn't represent people around here," Mr Price says.
'F***ing just shoot them'
During an interview on the BBC earlier this month, Farage said the West "provoked" Russia to invade Ukraine because of the eastward expansion of the European Union and NATO.
His remarks drew strong criticism across the British political spectrum, but he went on to repeat them during campaigning.
Some of the party's activists and staff have been accused of making racist, Islamophobic, and homophobic comments.
This week, a Channel 4 News investigation covertly filmed a Reform UK volunteer in Clacton saying people seeking asylum should be shot.
"Get the young [army] recruits there with guns on the f***ing beach, target practice. F***ing just shoot them," the volunteer says in the video.
He also uses a racial slur to describe Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and says Islam is a "disgusting cult".
Mr Sunak says the comment "hurts and it makes me angry", and says Farage has questions to answer about his campaign.
The volunteer has apologised and says his personal views do not reflect those of Reform UK.
Some of Farage's senior campaign figures were also filmed speaking offensively by Channel 4's hidden camera.
One man points out a LGBT flag on a passing police car and says, "you see that f***** degenerate flag on the front bonnet [of the police car], what are the Old Bill [police] doing promoting that crap?"
Responding initially to the footage, Mr Farage said he was "dismayed by the reported comments of a handful of people associated with my local campaign," saying they would no longer be involved.
He later wrote on X that one man was an actor and that the "whole episode does not add up".
The man says he does act but was campaigning for Reform UK at the time he made the comments.
Channel 4 rejects Farage's suggestions and says it did not pay any Reform UK volunteer as part of its report.
Polls predict change of government after 14 years
If the polls are right, the UK's Labour Party is expected to win a thumping majority in the July 4 election, ending 14 years of Conservative government.
Under Britain's first-past-the-post electoral system, Reform cannot win this election. Farage himself acknowledges that.
But he wants to win enough seats to be a dominant force in opposition.
Former Conservative Party MP Rory Stewart tells the ABC Reform UK "poses a very significant threat to the Conservatives", but adds that the Tories only have themselves to blame.
"If they hadn't tried to tack to the right — if they'd concentrated on decent, sensible, moderate set of ground policies — they would have had a better chance of stopping these catastrophic losses that they're facing," Mr Stewart says.
"It was very foolish to bet the house on trying to tack after older, more and more right-wing voters and culture wars, when that is always going to play to the populist hands.
"You can't out-Farage, Farage."
Mr Stewart thinks Nigel Farage and Reform UK will only win a few seats, but they could be "a danger in five years' time".
Farage tells the ABC he is playing the long game.
"Success [at this election] would be a large number of votes, a sort of bridgehead into parliament, and then build a position over the next five years," he says.
First though, he needs to win in Clacton.
Voting is not compulsory in the UK, so Farage must not only convince the people here to vote for him, but to bother voting at all.
