Ooh-er. He was a bit excruciating. Sometimes in life, people in the public eye who once understood the Zeitgeist of the times, demonstrate that, all of a sudden, they’ve lost it and their desperation is palpable. Each time I witness this collapse, this “inversion”, I develop a sort of inner squirming discomfort. The first time I recall it was as a child when my parents eagerly sat me down in front of the black and white tele to watch their beloved Judy Garland at the London Palladium, not long before she died. By then, she’d lost it, and even as a child I felt that everyone understood the stark pathos of Judy’s situation, but loathed the notion of publically admitting it, so hardly any comment was made. On that occasion, despite being about nine years old, I just wanted to leave the room. I think the effect was deliberately captured by David Mamet and James Foley with their character Shelley “The Machine” Levene, played brilliantly by Jack Lemmon in the film Glengarry Glen Ross. Matt Groening, parodied the same character from Glengarry Glen Ross, calling him Gil Gunderson, as a hapless loser salesman in “The Simpsons”. This most commonly happens to ageing comedians who increasingly desperately try to raise a laugh using techniques that are long outdated. Anyway, Farage, appeared like a kind of ageing comedian who was past his sell by date. He was sweating and he thought he had a few cards stashed up the sleeve, like the idea that foreigners with Aids were coming to the UK to just to get free treatment on our bloody NHS, the cheek of it! I think he thought that one would get the cheering going, and he looked around grinning at the audience in anticipation of his big point hitting home, but it didn’t happen – in fact the Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood told him he should be ashamed for that comment and it was she who got a cheer. He kept appealing to those baser prejudices that he thought were there, but it didn’t work – I think his time has come and gone (lets hope I’m right).