It started off as a welcome introduction to the residents of Crawley. A series of tweets that announced that he was intending to run as a candidate in the town representing the Brexit Party.

Wayne Bayley had started his social media campaign and now all eyes were on how it was going to go.

Except there was just one small, teeny tiny, minor, hardly anything really, problem.

There were two Wayne Bayley accounts and the one more active turned out to be an imposter.

But what makes it even stranger isn’t the fact someone decided to pretend to be Mr Bayley, but that the fake account was no parody account but appeared to be supporting him. So what was the point?

The fake was in-fact so much more active than the real Mr Bayley that they attracted the attention of some journalists which is why on the 11th Nov when Nigel Farage announced that there would be no Brexit Party candidates running for seats last held by Conservatives, something dramatic happened.

The fake Wayne Bayley flipped.

Suddenly media attention changed from someone announcing their running, to someone acting in such an appauling manner that the question of whether they should ever be considered a true candidate was now at the forefront.

With a tweet containing foul language followed by more about how Mr Farage had let everyone down, journalists began rubbing their hands together as they started work on their tabloid stories.

At the same time, the realisation that there were two Wayne Bayley twitter accounts began to dawn and now began the rush to discover who was real and who wasn’t.

In what can only be portrayed as one of the most farcicle public displays of having to prove oneself the ‘real’ Mr Bayley ended up having to follow the instructions of a political editor and take a photo of himself holding up a current newspaper.

Here you go. Let me know if you are convinced now? pic.twitter.com/bFUj8YMUzp — Wayne Bayley (@wayne_bayley) November 12, 2019

But it was perhaps not even required as suddenly the fake profile became suspended by Twitter and inboxes across local publications received an email from the supposed imposter saying:

‘Always check your sources before running a story. Anyone can be behind a social media account. UpDog’

The fake account was finally suspended.

But all this still begs the question – what was the point? Was it someone who just wanted to help? Was it a clever PR stunt?

Whatever the case it is clear the real Wayne Bayley has gained much more press attention with it than without it, but without the Brexit Party candidacy then what is left?