UKIP will shake up the "cosy consensus" in the Welsh Assembly, its most high-profile Welsh candidate yet has said.

Former Conservative MP Neil Hamilton is odds on to represents Powys in the Assembly after May’s election.

Polls are predicting the anti European Union party could win up to nine seats in the Assembly and with the proportional representation system used Mr Hamilton’s position as its lead candidate for the Mid and West Wales region puts him in prime position to take a seat in Cardiff Bay.

It would represent a coming of age for the party and a remarkable political comeback for Mr Hamilton 19 years after losing his previously safe Conservative seat of Tatton in Cheshire to ’anti-sleaze candidate’ Martin Bell.

Since his 1997 election defeat Mr Hamilton, and perhaps more so his wife Christine, have became national celebrities - famed more for their television appearances than a political career in which the former MP rose to be a minister in John Major’s cabinet.

Mr Hamilton believes his past experience, and that of Mark Reckless another high profile defector from the Conservatives to Ukip, during the last Parliament, will be an advantage. He dismisses the idea their past as high profile Conservatives will count against them.

"Nobody in Ukip, and certainly in Ukip Wales, has the experience I have in politics. Mark Reckless and I will work very happily and put our Parliamentary experience at the disposal of everyone else.

"I’ve got a lifetime of Parliamentary and political experience, I’ve been in government as a minister and I’ve even been a member of the EU council of ministers. I’m the only candidate who has been in the belly of the beast in Brussels as a trade minister 20 years ago."

His experiences post election defeat will also stand him in good stead, he believes: "I can identify with people who have problems like losing their job or house, I know what that’s like. Christine was my secretary and assistant so she also lost her job overnight and we had to get on with it.

"We had to make a new life for ourselves, but I never lost my interest in politics although I wasn’t actually involved for 10 years. I got back involved as soon as I could afford to do so."

Asked if the numerous television and pantomime appearances he and Christine have taken part in made him a comedy character, the former barrister replied: "That’s better than being a tragic character.

"I’ve been a serious politician but also with Christine had success cheering people up. We’ve had four successful shows at the Edinburgh Festival and we were both in the Rocky Horror Show 30th anniversary .

"I’m not an identikit politician and I don’t take myself too seriously I do take representing the political interest of Wales seriously."

The couple now live in Wiltshire but Mr Hamilton, who was born near Blackwood and grew up in Ammanford, doesn’t accept criticism Ukip’s candidates will be English residents sitting in the body responsible for public services in Wales.

"MPs in Westminster spend most of the week in London not their constituencies and before I became the MP for Tatton I had no connection with Cheshire but I was born, bred and educated in Wales and a lot of my family still live there."

Mr Hamilton, who will also stand in the Carmarthen East and Dinefwr constituency which includes Llandovery, is unsure on plans to move to move to Wales: "My first priority will be to find somewhere close to the Assembly to base myself. I will have to wait and see what happens after the election and what we can afford, though where we live now is only an hour from Cardiff so that’s not impossible.

"The problem with Mid and West Wales is it covers about 80 per cent of the country and I can’t live everywhere unless I buy a mobile home."

On his and the party’s other high profile candidate Mark Reckless’ political past Mr Hamilton says: "That’s the point, we’re ex Tories. We also have people who are ex Labour, ex Liberal Democrats, ex Plaid Cymru but we’re all coming together to achieve the goal we believe in restoring national independence. There is much more that unites us than divides us and party labels are a distraction in a way. I’ve been an MP and worked with people from different parties on different issues."

Mr Hamilton believes Ukip, if it has nine members will hold the balance of power in the 60 member Senedd, but says he has no wish for the party to enter government.

"Well personally I don’t want to be part of a coalition at all. Our job is to offer constructive opposition. All the other parties are saying pretty much the same thing. There is too much of a cosy consensus in the Assembly and our job is to break it up.

"I find it bizarre Plaid Cymru, a supposedly nationalist party, are campaigning to remain effectively a colony of the EU. We are the only party campaigning for true independence for Wales. Plaid Cymru require Wales to be governed from Brussels rather than Cardiff."

Mr Hamilton also acknowledged a recent opinion poll that showed Brecon and Radnorshire and neighbouring Ceredigion, both in the electoral region he hopes to represent, as among the constituencies most supportive of Britain remaining in the EU.

Other polls have shown rising support for withdrawal from the EU in Wales, despite parts of Wales receiving the highest amounts of European economic development funding and an agricultural industry in which many farmers are dependent on European subsidy.

The former Aberystwyth University student says: "Ceredigion has apparently come out as the most Europhile county in England and Wales, I want to convince people to take a different view.

"Ceredigion is probably explained by the fact it has a very large university population and young people tend to be more pro EU than older people, and also people in higher education.

"As regards Brecon and Radnor that can’t be the reason," thinks Mr Hamilton but he is unconvinced the area’s farming population can explain its positivity towards membership: "The EU has been an absolute disaster for farming, we get £1 back for every £2 we put in through or rebate or money spent on farming."