A television presenter who made his name fronting a popular show about ghosts and the paranormal is to be unveiled tomorrow as Reform’s new boss, the Mail can reveal.
Dr David Bull, 56, who backs ‘binning the burka’, will replace Zia Yusuf whose resignation as chairman last Thursday threatened to plunge Nigel Farage’s party into chaos.
The new chairman is a former hospital doctor who moved into broadcasting shortly after he qualified at London’s St Mary’s Medical Hospital School in 1993. His most prominent presenting role was on paranormal reality TV show Most Haunted Live!.
The openly gay Dr Bull, 56, follows the Scottish born Yusuf, 38, who is the son of Sri Lankan Muslims. ‘I think we are ticking the right diversity boxes,’ joked one senior Reform figure today.
Last week, Yusuf, a multi-millionaire businessman, provoked uproar when he criticised Reform’s newest MP Sarah Pochin for calling for a burka ban in the Commons at Prime Minister’s Questions. The next day Yusuf, 38, unexpectedly quit to the relief of many of his senior colleagues who found him difficult to work with.
Unlike Yusuf, the new Reform chairman is an advocate of banning the burka, which he regards as an ‘anti-British symbol’.
Farage hopes the Bull appointment will calm the frayed nerves of many party members coming, as it does, just three months after the resignation of the Reform MP Rupert Lowe. He quit in protest at Farage’s ‘dictatorial’ style of leadership.
When Yusuf resigned on Thursday he said he no longer believed that working for Reform to win power at the next election was ‘a good use of my time’. Many Reform senior figures feared he would deliver a devastating post-resignation interview but, in a bizarre twist, he instead announced on Saturday he was rejoining Reform only 48 hours after he quit.
Dr David Bull (right) with Derek Acorah and Yvette Fielding on Most Haunted Live! at Dudley Castle in 2002
Dr David is a presenter on the Rupert Murdoch channel Talk
Mr Yusuf used a BBC interview to say he regretted a tweet in which he said Sarah Pochin had asked a ‘dumb’ question at Prime Minister’s Questions last Wednesday
He is being put in charge of Reform’s ‘Doge’ team, which is modelled on the Department of Government Efficiency set up by US President Trump in the US.
Asked today why he had resigned as chairman, Yusuf told the BBC: ‘I’ve been working pretty much non-stop, virtually no days off. It is very difficult to keep going at that pace.’
Yusuf alienated many party members with his abrupt manner and controlling style of management. Arron Banks, a founder of Leave EU who is a close friend of Mr Farage, said that Yusuf was a ‘control freak’ who was ‘prone to changing his mind frequently’.
One party source said: ‘Yusuf’s new role will keep him out of party HQ as he will be visiting the county councils which we now run across the country to try to cut out waste. It will be a better use of his talents and energies.’
There had been speculation that Ann Widdecombe, 77, the redoubtable former Tory prisons minister who defected to Mr Farage’s side in 2019, would be the new chairman. ‘It’s not Widdecombe even though she is very highly regarded,‘ said a source.
Dr Bull, who is a presenter on the Rupert Murdoch channel Talk, is not wealthy like Yusuf, who netted £30 million from the sale of an upmarket concierge firm.
Briefly a Brexit Party MEP, he is described by colleagues as collegiate and a team player.
Before joining Farage’s Brexit Party, Dr Bull was the Tory parliamentary candidate for Brighton Pavilion when David Cameron was party leader. But he stood down in 2009 and headed up a policy review on sexual health. He published his first book, Cool And Celibate?: Sex And No Sex, arguing the benefits of abstinence for teenagers.
A former anchor of the BBC current affairs programme Newsround, he presented Most Haunted Live! between 2002 and 2005.
A Reform source said: ‘He looks and sounds good and he‘s been out and proud for years so we have no worries about any skeletons in his closet.’
