The talk of the town yesterday was Farage v Brand -This is The Big One. I really do not know why anyone thought it was anything other than puerile hype, and watching the show for a mercifully brief twenty minutes last night, I was struck by the predictable spectre of uninformed audience rage alongside obfuscated fixed positions on the panel.

The idea of a ’bout’ between these two was chiefly silly because while Nigel Farage’s sport is underwater rugby, Russell Brand’s is shagging. Both, however, are playing let’s pretend. In Farage’s case, it’s because he’s a chancer who wants to move Britain even further to the Right…whereas with Brand, it’s attention-seeking – and the inability to stop showing everyone how intellectually clever he is.

Anyway, while the media this morning are making the most of a spat they see as sensational, almost everyone has missed – yet again – more glaring evidence that Mr Farage is a phoney.

With a smug nod and a wink, a few weeks back on Twitter Nige congratulated himself on getting a fat donation from the disgustingly rich but strategically smart Lord Ashcroft. Today it has emerged that Express Newspapers owner Richard Desmond is to give UKip a £300,000 donation….and very probably the support of the Daily Express during the 2015 General Election.

Now if you’re naive enough to think that a man who befriends rich pollsters and pornographers (when not grovelling at the feet of the Amero-Australian Turdoch) is going to change anything for the better in British politics, then I suggest you join Jeffrey Archer’s fan club – because it’s clearly where you belong.

But the tragic thing here is that a lot of very well-meaning and genuine patriots are naive about Mr Farage, and may be lost to politics forever as and when (not if) he lets them down. Worse still, there are many soi-disant ‘savvy’ types who think they can use him for their own ends…..which, if you recall, was precisely how the little man from Linz got started.

I use the Hitler parallel in relation to a career, not to suggest there is any remote resemblance between Nigel and Adolf. Indeed, Brand’s cheap jibe about the UKip leader being “a Pound-shop Enoch Powell” revealed Russell Guevara for the politically illiterate twerp he is. Whatever one thinks of Enoch Powell’s politics, he was a highly cultured man and far more of a genuine democrat than either of these antagonists. I doubt if Brand was even born when Powell spoke out against multiculturalism. And I’d lay good money that the latest Jesus lookalike has never analysed just how many prescient statements the Tory rebel made.

I feel more and more now that it is a mark of how far our politics have descended that either Farage or Brand are in the public eye as somehow having something important to say. I lauded Brand when he got clean, and on several occasions praised his ‘don’t vote it’s pointless’ stance as not just refreshing but entirely logical. Equally, on television and being patronised by news anchors, he is good to watch and infectiously funny. But people saying “let’s give Communism another chance” are just as dim as the Nipponese QE fanatics shouting “One more heave!”

As for Farage, I fancy I have spoken to and received messages from rather more senior former Kippers than most people. The UKip leader is a control freak, and his candidates are, on the whole, a shambles. He is right to say that the Tory and Labour media are victimising individual UKip luminaries: but his solution is to fight fire with fire…by getting rich media owners on his side. If ever there was a classic case of thinking the ends justify the means, then this is it. Berthold Brecht, eat your heart out.

Earlier at The Slog: Why the Greek fiasco is the final furlong marker post in the race to Crash2