ITV's Loose Women promised to 'grill' Nigel Farage, then Kelly Brook blew a raspberry on his belly

It appears there is literally nothing far right enough that Nigel Farage can do to shake off his role as the nation’s favourite risqué uncle

The hosts of ITV’s Loose Women had promised they would be “grilling” Nigel Farage on Tuesday lunchtime, so they must have been as disappointed as anyone when what had been billed as an intense political interrogation ended with Kelly Brook raising his shirt, dropping almost to her knees and literally begging the most divisive man in Britain to let her blow a raspberry on his exposed belly.

Indeed what could better encapsulate Britain’s broken political culture than the mere fact that if you want to watch proper political interviews you have little choice but to kill time on Babestation waiting for HARDTalk with Stephen Sackur, while right-wing reality TV mock-fellatio is right there on the daytime listings, sandwiched between This Morning and Judge Rinder.

In fairness to the four time former Ukip leader turned lunchtime quite literal shirt-lifter, he could scarcely have done more since the EU referendum to rip back the curtain and expose himself as oh so much more than a charming Eurosceptic.

First there was going to Mississippi to shill for not-yet-then President Trump. Then there was addressing the far right rally in Germany. Last week, he gladly took a video call to appear on the TV show of US crimson rage blob Alex Jones, a man who actively maintains that the Sandy Hook massacre was a deep state hoax, a repeated slander that, mystifyingly, the grief-stricken parents have only just got round to suing him for.

But on this evidence, it appears there is literally nothing he can do to shake off his role as the nation’s favourite pissed risqué uncle.

In fact, in scenes that the ITV Player app continues to confirm I almost certainly cannot have hallucinated, Farage’s “grilling” began with Kelly Brook demurely asking whether he had “noticed her” at a party the pair had recently both been at. It may even be possible that the former FHM Sexiest Woman In The World curled her hair around her index finger at this point. “You were the star of the room,” she beamed. “You were the star of the room.”

(Minutes later, she would be, well, I can’t type it out again.)

Janet Street-Porter, a former newspaper editor no less, wanted to know nothing of any of the above incidents, by the way, preferring to ask instead on his opinions on the royal baby (spoiler alert: Nigel likes the royal baby).

And then, at the end, Street-Porter placed Farage in the centre of the stage, asked him to close his eyes, then danced around him in apparent yogic meditation. “I’m cleansing your aura, Nigel, I’m cleansing your aura.”

Still, in these fraught days through which we must walk together, it is always reassuring to know that, come what may, Nigel Farage is still having an absolutely great time.