If you’re a singer, or actor or dancer, you may have an ambition to appear regularly on television, but you face so many obstacles it seems hopeless. So here’s a tip that could help. Take a break to set up a far-right party and make some speeches about Europe and Muslims, and you’ll be on every day for nine years.

Tommy Robinson, for example, was prepared to graft like that and now he’s rewarded with regular slots on every news programme. So much so, that you expect to hear: “Now the weather for the northwest, read by Tommy Robinson.” To which he’d likely say: “There’s a right chilly front sweeping through the Lake District, I’m sick of it, decent people are sick of it, we’ve had enough. They say it will be gone by Wednesday at 7am but we can’t trust ’em.”

He’ll almost certainly be on this year’s Strictly Come Dancing, while Viktor Orban, leader of the Hungarian fascist party, will be on Saturday Kitchen, saying: “My food hell is cream cheese bagel as it dilute purity of Hungarian race, but my food heaven is marmite sandwich.”

Nigel Farage's most controversial moments Show all 12 1 /12 Nigel Farage's most controversial moments Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he unveiled that 'breaking point' poster during the referendum Mr Farage was accused of deploying “Nazi-style propaganda” when he unveiled a poster showing Syrian refugees travelling to Europe under the next “Breaking point”. Users on social media were quick to compare the advert to a Nazi propaganda film with similar visuals and featuring Jewish refugees. The poster was particularly controversial because it was unveiled the morning of the killing of Labour MP Jo Cox Rex Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said he’d be concerned if his neighbours were Romanian In May 2014 Mr Farage was accused of a “racial slur” against Romanians after he suggested he would be concerned living next to a house of them. “I was asked if a group of Romanian men moved in next to you, would you be concerned? And if you lived in London, I think you would be,” he told LBC radio during an interview. Asked whether he would also object to living next to German children, he said: “You know the difference” Bongarts/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the EU campaign was won 'without a bullet being fired' Nigel Farage has said the next Prime Minister has to be a Leave supporter AFP/Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he resigned as Ukip leader and came back days later After failing to win the seat of South Thanet at the general election, Nigel Farage stepped down as Ukip leader – as he had promised to do during the campaign. Days later on 11 May he “un-resigned” and said he would stay after being convinced by supporters within the party. We’ll see how long his resignation lasts this time AP/Matt Dunham Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he blamed immigrants for making him late Mr Farage turned up late to a £25-a-head ‘meet the leader’ style event in Port Talbot, Wales in December 2014. Asked why he was late, he blamed immigrants. “It took me six hours and 15 minutes to get here - it should have taken three-and-a-half to four,” he said. “That has nothing to do with professionalism, what it does have to do with is a country in which the population is going through the roof chiefly because of open-door immigration and the fact that the M4 is not as navigable as it used to be” Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he wanted to ban immigrants with HIV from Britain Mr Farage has used his platform as Ukip leader call for people with HIV to be banned from coming to Britain. Asked in an interview with Newsweek Europe in October 2014 who he thought should be allowed to come to the UK, he said: “People who do not have HIV, to be frank. That’s a good start. And people with a skill.” He also repeated similar comments in the 2015 general election leadership debates Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he defended the use of a racial slur against Chinese people Defending one of Ukip’s candidates, who used the word “ch**ky” to describe a Chinese person, Mr Farage said: “If you and your mates were going out for a Chinese, what do you say you're going for?" When he was told by the presented that he “honestly would not” use the slur, Mr Farage replied: “A lot would” Lintao Zhang/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said parts of Britain were ‘like a foreign land’ The Ukip leader used his 2014 conference speech to declare parts of Britain as being “like a foreign land”. He told his audience in Torquay that parts of the country were “unrecognisable” because of the number of foreigners there. Mr Farage has also previously said he felt uncomfortable when people spoke other language on a train Screengrab Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the British army should be deployed to France At the height of trouble at Britain’s Calais border Mr Farage proposed a novel solution. The Ukip leader called for the British army to be sent to France to put down a migrant rebellion. “In all civil emergencies like this we have an army, we have a bit of a Territorial Army as well and we have a very, very overburdened police force and border agency,” he said. “If in a crisis to make sure we’ve actually got the manpower to check lorries coming in, to stop people illegally coming to Britain, if in those circumstances we can use the army or other forces then why not” AFP/Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said breastfeeding women should ‘sit in the corner’ Mr Farage sparked protests from mothers after he told women to “sit on the corner” if they wanted to breastfeed their children. “I think that given that some people feel very embarrassed by it, it isn’t too difficult to breastfeed a baby in a way that's not openly ostentatious,” Mr Farage said. He added: "Or perhaps sit in the corner, or whatever it might be” AFP/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the gender pay gap exists because women are ‘worth less’ At a Q&A on the European Union in January 2014 Mr Farage said there was no discrimination against women causing the gender pay gap. Instead, he said, women were paid less because they were simply “worth far less” than many of their male counterparts. “A woman who has a client base, has a child and takes two or three years off - she is worth far less to her employer when she comes back than when she went away because that client base won't be stuck as rigidly to her portfolio,” he said Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said he actually couldn’t guarantee £350m to the NHS after Brexit During the EU referendum campaign the Leave side pledged to spend £350 million a week on the National Health Service – claiming that this is what the UK sends to Brussels. Nigel Farage didn’t speak out against this figure and also pledged to spend EU cash on the health service and other public services himself. Then the day of the election result he suddenly changed his tone, saying he couldn’t guarantee the cash for the NHS and that to pledge to do so was “a mistake” Getty

The most encouraging aspect of this boom in far-right punditry is that it’s made it respectable for mainstream politicians to mix with the far right. So Jacob Rees-Mogg has promoted speeches by leaders of the German AfD Party, which wants to close all EU borders and demands migrants without their papers should be shot.

He said it didn’t mean he supported the party, but it was important to show a German view, which makes it completely innocent, in the same way you might read out the speeches of Goebbels because it’s important to show the rules of German grammar.

Next week, perhaps he’ll put one of those videos made by Osama bin Laden on his Facebook page, and say this doesn’t mean he agrees with all jihadi policies, but they do make an important point about the need for women to do all the childcare.

Nigel Farage spoke at an AfD rally, along with one of their leaders, Bjorn Hocke, who has complained that there shouldn’t be a memorial to the Holocaust. I suppose it’s more evidence of the metropolitan elite’s political correctness, that you can’t even have a Holocaust these days without someone wanting to build a statue about it.

And Ukip MEP Stuart Agnew spoke at a meeting of the Springbok Club that campaigns for South Africa to return to apartheid, and a return to “European rule throughout Africa”. Stuart said at the meeting: “We want our countries back” – it’s always nice to find something that unites you with your foreign host.

He explained that he speaks at lots of different events, so it would be unfair to complain because he spoke at this one. That’s just part of being busy I suppose, one day you speak at a Cub Scout fundraiser for a new tent, the next day you’re in front of an apartheid flag with a group demanding a return to white power. It must be lovely to mix with a broad spectrum of the community.

Part of the problem for the media these days, when it comes to allowing people on their programmes, is everyone denies they’re racist. Someone could set up the Extremely Racist Party, and the leader would appear on Newsnight to say: “I haven’t got a racist bone in my body.”

Also, there’s confusion about the idea of “balance”, so a report about climate change has to be balanced with someone who refutes all scientific evidence because they were told to, by a voice that lives in the plughole in their bath.

You expect to hear the newsreader say: “Thanks to our correspondent for that report on the fire at Notre Dame, and now for balance I’m going to talk to Jimmy, an arsonist who loves fires, speaking to us from a secure institution on an island off Anglesey.”

But the most dramatic part of this trend is it seems to work, and the more that characters such as Farage, Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson associate with the far-right, the more popular they become with their angry fans.

So now other Conservatives are trying it. Jeremy Hunt, who supported Remain and claimed to be a more liberal type, said this week: “Many countries in the EU want Europe to be one country, but Britain always wants to be independent.”

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He knows this is entirely made up, but to have a chance of becoming leader he has to catch up with the other crazy ones. Because the rule now is you have to be prepared to say something outrageous, in the hope the ordinary person will tell their mates “say what you will about him, he’s prepared to make up a pile of shit, and that’s what we need these days, someone prepared to take the bull by the horns and say huge piles of steaming made-up shit”.

So they’ll all do it as the leadership election comes near. Michael Gove will tell us: “I can tell you what the EU is planning next – they’re going to ban masturbating. That’s right, from April 2020 you’ll have to get a permit from Angela Merkel or you won’t be able to fiddle with yourself and I will not stand by and let the great British people be treated like this.”

And while the stream of imaginative nonsense becomes more surreal, the one time an interviewer became really angry with a guest this week was when Sky’s Adam Boulton said: “You’re a bunch of incompetent middle-class self-indulgent people who want to tell us how to live our lives” – to a 21-year-old climate-change protester.