I'm a Celebrity has revealed the boring truth about Nigel Farage

When Nigel Farage entered the jungle on I’m A Celebrity… there was much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. ‘I feel a little bit uncomfortable,’ TV critic Scott Bryan confessed on BBC Breakfast, ‘if his political opinions – not only on migration, but also around climate change and supporting the election of Donald Trump – are not going to be adequately challenged. I’m worried about the free ride that might give him.’ John Crace in the Guardian had even more green ants in his pants: ‘You have to wonder what ITV thinks it is doing giving him a platform. To normalise the abhorrent.’

Can these people hear themselves? They’re talking about a man whose Brexit party won a national election only three and a bit years ago. Farage is not a fringe freak, however much his critics might wish it so. His opinion on immigration – that it needs to be controlled and our borders enforced – is shared by an overwhelming majority of the country, even a majority of people who would never, ever vote for him. Farage is normal, at least for a politician; it is the likes of Bryan and Crace, with their terror of what the masses might do, who are on the margins.

I’m a Celeb…has revealed that Farage is a very ordinary, even rather dull, man

Farage has said that one of the reasons for signing up to go the jungle – as well as the enormous amount of money ITV gave to him – was to reach a big young audience. If so, he’s deluded. I hate to break it to you, Nigel, but a huge young audience last tuned in to ITV for the finals of the TV Times Disco Dancing Championship in 1978. Despite its tawdry attempts to funk itself up, ITV remains the epitome of a granny channel. He’d have got a younger demographic as guest speaker on a Saga cruise.

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There’s more bad news for Nige: the show has revealed that Farage is a very ordinary, even rather dull, man, even if he is – unsurprisingly – accustomed to emotional people who don’t know what they’re talking about having a pop at him. I’ve always been sceptical of the Biblical wisdom that a gentle answer turneth away wrath, but in his skirmishes in camp Farage has undercut both Nella Rose and Fred Sirieix, leaving them nowhere to go and making them look ridiculous. This is the same stoic approach he’s taken to the trials – and a world away from Matt Hancock’s media-friendly emotional flannel last year. Still, it’s hardly enough to convince most people to change their minds about Farage.

Even so, his critics continue to complain. It’s no surprise: after all, few people like Farage make it on to the airwaves these days, at least when it comes to reality shows like I’m a Celebrity…. Television is seen by some as a civilising mechanism, ‘normalising’ the things and people they like, and ostracising the things and people they don’t. As a result, 2020s TV is absolutely bursting with the approved kind of talking head, even if they talk a load of nonsense.

In the past few weeks, viewers have been forced to watch Chris Packham star in Chris Packham: Is it Time to Break the Law? Erm, nope. We’ve seen the BBC international editor Jeremy Bowen shrug off nonchalantly how his report on the alleged bombing of a hospital in Gaza was ‘wrong’. Even on Doctor Who there’s no escape: the new episode was a flying brick-subtle attempt to normalise the lunatic idea that people can change sex. What next: Basil Brush discoursing on white privilege?

The ad breaks, too, are hardly representative of Britain. Thanks to advertising, you’d be forgiven for thinking that everyone in Britain is in an interracial relationship and that we all have an absolutely ginormous dimly-lit kitchen like the galley of a Type 45 Destroyer. Some TV shows would also have you think that pre-Blair Britain was a cultural wasteland and incredibly racist but it was also full of people of colour for thousands of years. It’s not clear how we are to compute the two.

So, yes, television is packed with normalised nutters with deluded points of view – but Farage isn’t one of them. He might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but Farage is a breath of fresh air compared to much of what we TV viewers have to put up with.