Many in the industry had already raised eyebrows and voiced strong opinions at the decision to allow the controversial figure to take to the ITT stage, but Farage bounded in to a packed room full of applause.

He opened the session by admitting that he had spent most of last night in the bar, partying late into the night with ITT delegates until at least 3.30am.

However despite the lack of sleep, Farage bounced around the stage, with a speech full of jokes, leaving the audience in giggles for much of the session – albeit grudgingly for a number of delegates.

“I want to dispel a myth,” he began, “that we want out of Europe and that we hate Europeans.

“I’m married to a German that was born and raised in Hamburg, so no-one needs to tell me about the danger of living in a German dominated household.”

The easy gags continued throughout Farage’s speech, which was largely spent discussing why he is so keen to be out of the EU and how he first became involved in politics – starting out in 1990, “the day some one ran into the pub I was in and declared that we had joined the European Exchange Rate mechanism”.

Farage insisted that he “loves Europe” but that he “absolutely detested the attempts to take 28 countries and force them to work together in one body. I will not rest until we have killed the monster that is the European Union,” he added.

The Ukip leader said he also believed it would not be long before Greece returned to the Drachma, “and then you lot will be very busy as everyone will want to be holidaying in Greece because it will be so cheap,” he told the audience.

“I’ll be heading straight down to my local travel agent on Sevenoaks high street to book a two-week holiday there.”

The floor was then opened up to questions from the delegates. The first quizzed Farage about his views on women in business, following a statement he had made at a recent city brokers’ breakfast briefing as to why women were less paid in the sector.

Farage said typically that his answer at the time – “because women often have to take a break due to family life” and are subsequently out of touch with their clients, meaning they are “worth less when they return” – had been taken out of context by the media.

The Ukip leader told delegates he was a keen advocate of promoting women within his party, although he said he was adamantly against positive discrimination.

“I find positive discrimination wholly wrong and demeaning,” he said. “People should be appointed on merit. We have a lot of women representing Ukip now.”

Farage also made reference to Godfrey Bloom - the senior Ukip MEP known for his controversial “bongo bongo land” outburst, and who last September, joked that a room debating women in politics was “full of sluts”.

“We have one person in Ukip – Godfrey Bloom – who has a sense of humour that would have worked at dinner in 1956. He was trying to be funny,” he added.

Farage also repeated his insistence that Britain should follow Australia, by introducing a points system for immigrants. “I want us to have the kind of immigration policy that Australia has, where you have to be under 45 and have a trade or skill that will benefit the country. We should only be taking the kinds of people that will benefit this country.

“We’ve lost the distinction between people coming over just to work and people coming over to settle – they have to get a work permit. They shouldn’t have an automatic right to the benefits system in this country.

“Surely the argument is clean and logical – if you have immigrants coming into this country, it should be at a rate that’s sustainable.”

There was irony later however, as one delegate quizzed Farage as to the origins of his French-sounding surname.

“My name did used to be spelt differently,” he conceded. ‘It used to be Ferauge – my family once lived on the eastern borders of France; they were protestants who took political refugee status in this country.”

Unfortunately the session ran out of time before there was a chance to ask what trades or skills Farage’s family itself had brought to benefit Britain all those years ago.