BNP

Well, you know, I rather enjoyed that. Nick Griffin turned up on Question Time, there was a lot of social outrage, some wilful misreporting in the press, and a lot of sadly-dressed protestors outside the BBC (seriously - can there not be some kind of makeover show for these people? If even the BNP are smart enough to stick suits on in order to be taken more seriously you'd think that... oh... never mind).

The show itself was curious and yet marvellous, sickening and yet heart-warming. I'm not going to talk about the politics of the whole thing, as everyone knows I'm far to stupid to really get the whole thing, and by the time the show started I was about a bottle of wine down, but I am going to risk talking about the overall feel.

For one thing - Bonnie Greer. New favourite thing, clearly holding a doctorate in dismissively direct engagement without looking at her opponent once. Watching her and Nick Griffin sit next to each other was like watching The X Files after you realised that Duchovny and Anderson loathed each other. Painful yet brilliant.

Jack Straw - looked incredibly nervous, made a couple of neat points, but then kept on and on and on with bloody statistics. Yawn. It was a night for grand gestures, not for quoting what sounded like the small print on my credit card statement.

Token Liberal Democrat. Was Token Liberal Democrat.

Sayeeda Warsi. Hooray for the Tories finding a female Muslim lawyer. Except for the awkward bit when Dimbleby skewered her on her beliefs about gays and she managed not to let out a surprised yelp followed by a reasonably deft support of all things gay without actually specifically supporting anything gay at all. She. Will. Go. Far.

And finally The Griff. The brilliant thing about hateful death harpie Jan Moir is that she proved to be Nick Griffin's stumbling block. Up until then he had done reasonably. And "reasonably" is a word I'm sticking to. Everyone had come prepared with print-outs of awful things the man had said and he'd deflected each one with a wryly amused shake of the head. He'd not engaged with a single one, just given the impression "well that's wrong and it's sad you bring that up". Which, given that each and every thing he was challenged on was loathsome... well that was about the best you could manage.

Before the Jan Moir Moment there'd been a few utter howlers - like when he admitted he'd shared a platform with someone from the Klu Klux Klan... but from a non-violent sect. And the audience just zomg-ed. Oh, and that bit where he proved he liked Jews because he approved of them bombing seven shades of shit out of Hamas. And a few other equally "oh, oh dear, just... no... i mean... no." But overall there was that slight feeling of "This man is utterly repellant but trying his hardest to cover it up."

And then came Nick Griffin giving his opinion on Jan Moir. And he started off with quite a neat little sidestep:

"I personally believe that in the case of someone like Stephen Gately who's died the old maxim 'say nothing if not good'. So, I think it was wrong."

Which is a fairly neat way of condeming Jan Moir but also hiding a lot of baggage under the phrase "not good". But then up popped Nick Griffin's glorious petard:

"A lot of people find the site of two men kissing in public a bit creepy. I understand that homosexuals don't understand that, but that is how a lot of us feel. A lot of Christians feel that way."

Brilliantly awful. Utterly terrible. And yet it was a Happy Meal of a clanger. Glorious in the moment, but then immediately afterwards came the sickening realisation that this was his vote-winning moment. The point when a few people sat at home went "Oh, you know, he has a point..."

And that made me sad. And then Jan Moir posted a follow-up to last week. Curiously hidden away on the Daily Mail's site, her new article carries no advertising - could it be that no brand wants to be associated with her? Perhaps not even her own newspaper? The interesting thing about her defence (it's not an apology) is that, even if you give her the benefit of the doubt, she's still owning up to be a gloating death harpie. And I know I've used that phrase before, but she's worth it.