2009 in review - Nick Griffin appears on Question Time

Police hold people back outside Television Centre
protesting BNP leader Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time

Baroness Warsi recalls the most controversial TV show of the year

Normally before a television appearance you're all in the same green room and you mingle in the make-up rooms, too, but this time we all had our own rooms and our make-up was done separately. It wouldn't have been fair just to isolate him.

The only time I felt nervous was when I saw the piles of paper Jack [Straw] and Chris [Huhne] had. I felt like a student who hasn't done enough revision for an exam.

David Cameron felt that everything Nick Griffin finds repulsive about today's Britain is embodied in me. I'm a Yorkshire-born, Muslim daughter of hard-working, working-class parents. It was quite a brave decision. It was a high-profile, high-risk programme, politically. Once we got started, I enjoyed it. I find Nick Griffin an unpleasant and manipulative man, and intellectually shallow. He's part of the "anti" brigade. Always anti-someone: first Jews, then Blacks and now Muslims. But I think the BBC should have him on. As long as you're not beyond the pale – violent and beyond rational debate – you should be engaged, and exposed.

I was hoping the programme would follow the usual format, with questions on the economy, the Royal Mail, etc. Instead there was an obsessive concentration on race and what Nick Griffin had said in the past. I would have been intrigued with the BNP's policy on getting Britain out of the economic recession.

Nick Griffin was both extremely nervous and trying extremely hard to please. This was his big chance to seem a nice, reasonable guy. It looked very forced. David Dimbleby pulled him up, asking, "What are you smiling about?" At times it was like a comedy – especially when he talked about "non-violent versions of the Ku Klux Klan".

Later, Jack was waffling on that immigration was not an issue in Britain today. It was a difficult moment because I had to acknowledge that there was an element of legitimacy to what Nick Griffin was saying. I said, "I don't agree with the guy on the end, but you, Jack, aren't being honest on this."

Afterwards, my phone was jammed with texts and I had hundreds of emails. I read each and every one. There were some nasty ones saying, "Go back home," but 95% of them were positive. I also got a lot of emails from British Muslims, saying they were proud to see someone comfortably British and Muslim and able to articulate a sensible view – rather than the hotheads the BBC usually have on.

I don't think the BNP have had a poll boost. The poll questions are couched so wide that almost everyone would fall into them. Academics from the University of Manchester told me if there was a rise it was from about two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half per cent. I've also been told that on fascist and racist websites Griffin has been pilloried: things like: "He was trying so hard to hug the black woman and be nice to the Asian woman." So he's upset his core vote.

I'd happily share a platform with Nick Griffin again, but I'd much rather do it in a format where you can really debate the issues. I wanted to get behind and below the BNP beliefs; Question Time is more about point scoring.

Observer