MORE than 700 people are expected to turn out to “the biggest public meeting in living memory” in Clacton.

Douglas Carswell, UKIP's Clacton by-election candidate, will be welcoming party leader Nigel Farage to the former Clacton Coastal Academy site in Jaywick Lane on Wednesday.

He said the meeting is a breakthrough for “people’s politics" and that all 700 tickets were snapped up within 24 hours.

Mr Carswell said he was bowled over by the enormous demand for tickets.

"Next week David Cameron is due to address the Tory party conference in Birmingham in front of a handpicked audience of wannabe MPs, lobbyists and PR men, out of reach of the local population,” he said.

"But in Clacton on Wednesday, Nigel Farage and I will be showing that there is an enormous appetite in this country for proper, accessible political debate.

"Our meeting will be a genuine chance for residents of Clacton to come and ask authentic questions to the leader of UKIP and their UKIP candidate for the upcoming election. It will be local people writing the script.

"The former Labour MP Charles Clarke has said the age of big public meetings is over. All we can say in response is that it must be the way the old parties are doing them.”

The meeting will take place at 7.30pm on Wednesday.