UK election 2024: OnlyFans model charged after Nigel Farage milkshake attack

A woman has been charged with assault by beating and criminal damage after a milkshake was thrown at Nigel Farage on Tuesday afternoon.

Victoria Thomas-Bowen, 25, allegedly threw a McDonald’s drink at the Reform UK leader on his first day of campaigning to become the new MP for Clacton, in Essex.

Essex Police said Thomas-Bowen, an OnlyFans model, would appear at Colchester Magistrates’ Court on July 2.

Farage was targeted as he left a Wetherspoon pub in the seaside town. He is attempting to win the Tory-held constituency, which elected an MP representing his old party Ukip in 2015, in his eighth attempt to be elected to the Commons.

Thomas-Bowen publishes pictures on the explicit website OnlyFans and has more than 18,000 followers on her Instagram account.

In a video to social media, Farage initially made light of a drink being thrown over him, referencing the 2003 song Milkshake by Kelis as he joked: “My milkshake brings all the people to the rally”.

But in a subsequent interview, the Reform leader told ITV News Politics: “I don’t know what was thrown at me but it hit me in the face, fair and square, quite frightening”.

Asked why he thought he had been targeted again after a similar incident in 2019, he said: “Because I go out and meet the public – nobody else does.

“What does [Prime Minister] Rishi [Sunak] do? He gets a room with two dozen councillors or whatever it is. Nobody goes out and does the old-style street campaigning the way that I do. And this is the risk that goes with it, and I’ll be honest, it is quite scary.”

Farage was asked whether he thought about what would happen if he was attacked with something “more serious” than a milkshake. He replied: “That’s a very tough question to answer. I try not to.”

During his time as leader of the Brexit Party, he had warned that “radicalised remainers” were making political campaigning “impossible” after a drink was thrown over him during a European elections walkabout in Newcastle in 2019.

Later that year, Paul Crowther was ordered to pay Farage compensation after pleading guilty to common assault and criminal damage.