Nigel Farage relives the terror of his plane crash in interview with Piers Morgan

Nigel Farage has been forced to relive the terror of a plane crash which nearly killed him while he was campaigning in 2010. 

The former leader of the UK Independence Party said he had not looked at pictures taken after the crash, which showed him covered in blood as he crawled out of the wreckage, for three years. 

The plane had flipped upside down and nosedived into a field during an election stunt, crashing at Hinton-in-the-Hedges airfield, near Brackley, Northants

Nigel Farage

Speaking on ITV's Piers Morgan's Life Stories on Friday night, he described the "terror" of the crash as he revealed he feared the aircraft was going to burn before anybody realised he survived. 

After a segment which showed a series of pictures of the politician following the crash, Mr Morgan said Farage looked shocked. 

"I haven't looked at those pictures for two or three years, I don't want to look at them," Mr Farage replied. "It is not a great memory."

Describing the moment he realised the plane was coming down, he said he initially experienced denial before a "strange sort of terror". 

After the crash, he said: "I remember thinking then, 'we're covered in fuel' and I thought this blooming thing is going to burn and nobody would ever know I survived the crash."

Mr Morgan had earlier warned viewers to brace themselves as he wrote on Twitter: "Brace yourselves snowflakes, it's avalanche time."

The interview was aired after the results of Stoke-on-Trent Central's by-election were announced, with Ukip's Paul Nuttall failing the win the seat from Labour. 

Mr Farage, speaking after the results were announced from America, where he was giving a speech at the Annual Conservative Political Action Conference, said the party had paid the price for not being tough enough on immigration.

He also admitted he felt sorry for Mr Nuttall after a "hard campaign", which had been dogged by controversy in recent weeks after the candidate said a claim he had lost "close personal friends" in the Hillsborough disaster on his official website was untrue.

"I feel sorry for Paul Nuttall. He fought a hard campaign. I think there are some lessons to learn from it in terms of how we campaign, in terms of how we target," Mr Farage said.

"There is a debate in Ukip as to how strong we should be on the immigration issue. I personally think we should own it.

"So we will have to look at that and think: were we really tough enough, were we clear enough with the electorate? It has got to be looked at."