"Nick Clegg booed off stage in Nottingham"

From the BBC and the BBC:

Liberal Democrats have grown used to disappointing poll ratings but Nick Clegg reached a new low when he was booed off stage and had pints of beer thrown at him at a concert with his band The LibDem Underground in Nottingham.

They've lost many hundreds of councillors since 2010 and ten MEPs since 2009 and have now been reduced to playing Velvet Underground songs with EU-themed lyrics and kazoo solos. Nick Clegg has said before that you have to have a thick skin in politics and when I interviewed it was clear that he was feeling the pain of having beer thrown at him.

"Why are you throwing those?" Clegg asked the crowd at the Rock City venue. "I'd rather drink them." Exhausted, red-eyed and pale, Mr Clegg lasted only 15 minutes before being forced to flee the stage.

"Thank you so much Nottingham," he tweeted later. "Sorry that a couple of UKIP voters ruined it for everyone. OK, 4.3 million, to be precise."

Clegg, 47, is best known for his childhood role as a Liberal Democrat Member of the EU Parliament between 1999 and 2004 and a little remembered stint as Deputy Prime Minister from 2010 onwards.

He formed The LibDem Underground in 2012, performing parody songs such as “An appeal for an open-minded, generous-hearted Britain” (Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side) and “Going head-to-head with UKIP leader Nigel Farage in a TV debate” (Velvet Underground's All Tomorrow's Parties).

Mike Flower of Mike Flowers’ Pops is said to have gone into hiding after his 1996 recording “Velvet Underground Medley” was rediscovered on Spotify.