“It was one of those things they keep in a jar in the tent of a sideshow on the outskirts of a little, drowsy town. One of those pale things, drifting in alcohol plasma, forever dreaming and circling, with its peeled dead eyes staring out at you and never seeing you” – Ray Bradbury, The Jar, Weird Tales, November 1944.

Last Friday morning, in a packed working men’s club in the 97% Leave voting North Yorkshire moorland town of Blackleg Wang, I heard the chants of “Ni-gel! Ni-gel! Ni-gel!” die away, as Nigel Farage took the stage at his latest Brexit party rally. I was shocked. It was a long time since I had seen a politician who was actually popular with anyone.

In place of his usual pint – “I’m on the wagon until we’re out of Europe!” – Farage was carrying, with both hands, something mysterious, ominous and conical, covered by a thick black drape. I knew that it wasn’t Ann Widdecombe, as she had already spoken.

To the delight of his followers, Farage ignored the tooting of Andrew Marr’s little trumpet

“Now I’m not going to say what’s under this cover yet,” Farage said over dissolving applause, “and no, it isn’t Mrs May’s and Mr Corbyn’s latest serving of their homemade Brexit Fudge! We’ve all had quite enough of that I think, thank you very much!!” The crowd laughed. “Traitors!” they cried. And: “Take back control!!” And: “Did he say ‘fudge’? Is there fudge going begging?”

Out on the wild, windy moor, the BBC’s finger-pointing inquisitor Andrew Marr tapped at the window of the working men’s club and slithered through, like Cathy’s ghost, but more transparent.

Marr wore the ancient town crier costume of the traditional BBC newsman – white socks, buckled shoes, red velvet breeches and a tricorn hat – and blew a small tin trumpet to get the attention of Farage, his followers and the British viewing public. I winced at the futility of it. The game had changed, old ghost.

In the calculated absence of an actual Brexit party manifesto, Marr hoped, not unreasonably, to conjure a plausible one from the imprints left by Farage’s well-documented views on privatising the NHS, denying the need for climate change action and refusing people with Aids entry to the UK.

Play Video 2:04 Nigel Farage blasts BBC for being 'ridiculous' and 'ludicrous' on Andrew Marr Show - video

To the delight of his followers, Farage ignored the tooting of Marr’s little trumpet and blamed BBC bias. Within seconds, Farage fans had rushed their re-edited footage of Marr’s interrogation into the digital realm, flooding social media with alternative truths and victorious-looking soundbites.

Meanwhile, the medieval hand-cranked presses of the BBC were still grinding slowly into gear, their dwarven operators waiting for pigeons to carry their printed parchments to town, where they would be pinned up in the square on an old tree, weather permitting. The working men’s club window snapped decisively shut on Marr’s bony BBC head.

Viewers beyond Blackleg Wang filtered the exchange through the lens of their own prejudices and saw either a triumph or a travesty, depending, with predictable tragedy, on their respective ancient tribal loyalties, disillusion with the Westminster elite, current levels of educational attainment and whether they were big racists or not.

“Now, under this blanket,” Farage began, returning to his theme, “is a little something I bought, for just twelve pounds, not twelve euros, thank you very much Herr Juncker, from the owner of a travelling sideshow. It looks kind of like a brain, kind of like a pickled onion, kind of like a – well, see for yourselves!” And with a flourish, Farage dimmed the lights and raised the cloth that covered his purchase.

The leader of the Brexit party was holding aloft a large fruit jar and inside it, bobbing on phosphorescent fluid, something indistinct spun slowly in hypnotic silence before the transfixed faces of Farage’s awestruck followers.

To Old Tom Doolally, from Willow Farm, the thing in the jar was a lamb he loved as a child, but had been forced by his father to feast on, now come finally to forgive him.

To Charlie, the black man from Royston, it was “the centre of creation… the mother from which we all came a thousand years back”. To Mrs Tidbits, it was her baby, Foley, the little boy she lost to the dark and lonely water long ago.

And to Granny Carnation-Milk it was “all kinds of life – rain and sun and muck and jelly. Batter and dripping and children and cheese. Cream teas and cricket and The Black And White Minstrel Show at Christmas.”

“Why does it have to be one thing?” she asked Farage later. “Maybe it’s lots?”

Farage, it seemed to me, had no incentive to say exactly what was in his jar. Each of his audience took their own comforts from it. Outside the working men’s club window, Marr blew his tiny town-crier trumpet again. But no one inside turned away from the thing in Farage’s jar and its magical mystery was preserved.

By nightfall, the bearers of bad news had been bludgeoned and buried in the swamp of social media. Marr’s trumpet tooted silent bubbles as it disappeared permanently below the surface of the mire. His three-pointed town-crier hat bobbed on the bogwater, a meme in the making, signifying obsolescence.

Old Tom Doolally stood alone at the back of the working men’s club, seeing shapes in the solution he never saw before. Everybody was seeing what they wanted to see. All their thoughts ran in a fall of Yorkshire rain. Farage glanced up, satisfied, sucking on his cigarette. I made my excuses and left.

“It was just one of those things they keep in a jar in the tent of a sideshow on the outskirts of a little, drowsy town. One of those pale things, drifting in alcohol plasma, forever dreaming and circling, with its peeled dead eyes staring out at you and never seeing you.”

Stewart Lee’s new standup show, Snowflake/Tornado, is at the Leicester Square theatre, London, 29 October 2019-25 January 2020. A national tour will follow