Nick Griffin: It's contridictions all the way so far

That may or may not be true, but even giving Griffin the benefit of the doubt, he managed to prove the point that the BNP mask starts to melt when even the slightest media spotlight is cast across its face.

The BNP website boasts about how Griffin managed to put some "vicious lies" to bed. Actually, he righted one - that his pet dogs aren't called Anne and Frank, but actually Otto and Belle. That was it. And the name of his dogs, lets be honest, don't really count for much, just as the fact Anne Frank's father was called Otto doesn't either.

More interesting to me was that fact Griffin didn't dispute that he denied the Holocaust in the past, or that until just a decade ago, the BNP advocated violence to get its point across.

And then there was Mr Griffin's first public statement from the European Parliament the previous week - where he was supporting the idea of some sort of European Navy taskforce to stop "Europe sinking under the invasion of immigrants from Africa."

Putting aside the fact that this seems to contradict the BNP's opposition to what it sees as the march towards an European superstate - and surely the first sign of a superstate is a Europe-wide army - it's what Griffin said next that matters.

He repeated his suggestion that Europe should sink a few of these boats. He now says that he'd also want lifeboats on hand to take the immigrants back to Libya, but what he's advocating in effect is state-sponsored murder - there's no guarantee all those people on the boats would make it back to shore.

Then there's the on-going "What makes you English?" argument. Griffin obviously has his idea of what it is to be British - ie white - but his problem is that it isn't the definition of English, or indeed British, which is law. And he's at his most uncomfortable when asked about individuals - Dame Kelly Holmes, for example, or Sir Trevor McDonald, also on the show. In effect, he was forced to classify them as "not like us" - and that's when the mask really slips and the argument weakens.

"Come to this country and live like us and you're fine," says Griffin, which is fine, as long as you ignore the centuries of history which shows how constant immigration has shaped our nation. That's not to say that immigration as it stands isn't without its problems - but seemingly supporting guns on the cliffs of Dover (which Griffin wouldn't rule out) suggests a party long on rhetoric but short on substance.

Two months into his new job in Europe and it appears the mask is slipping - and so far achieved by simply asking questions. Perhaps it's not so easy to say things without foundations when you're elected. Maybe.

In just a few short minutes with Andrew Marr, Griffin contradicted himself time and again and, even under the most gentle of quizzing, showed the BNP struggle to make their arguments stand up. And as any journalist will tell you, hearing the BNP complain about the "lies" made against it is perhaps the most ironic political complaint of the year.

If the BBC is still looking for an answer on how to handle the BNP, it should just watch the Andrew Marr Show again. And for the rest of us, try getting a negative comment on the BNP website and then remind yourself it is the BNP which claims to having trouble being heard.