As far as it’s concerned, its contestants are now Nigel Farage and a bunch of cut-price chaff. The show isn’t even pretending it’s about anything else. And now he’s going to be best known as being Nigel Farage’s warmup guy. But by the end of it, some quarters were declaring him to be an OK guy. At first, the public rushed to punish him by making him undergo endless bushtucker trials. Last year’s big draw, Hancock – a man whose mishandling of care homes during the pandemic cost 20,000 lives – proved that nothing can redeem the irredeemable like being paid to eat kangaroo arse on the telly. Matt Hancock is to blame for this, obviously. What a grim, cynical show this has become. Do a trial, smile through the disgust and pray you come out of it looking like a good egg. That wouldn’t have worked for Farage, because he knows what he’s signed up for. He did this with quiet resolve, unlike the YouTuber whose primary tactic was to shriek. This was reinforced by Farage’s first challenge, which involved him putting his head in some snakes. ‘Did he veer a bit too far to the right?’ … Ant and Dec quip about Farage’s driving. But on the basis of his arrival – which brushed past any potential awkwardness in favour of a detailed discussion of the format of the television show First Dates – it’s going to be a cakewalk for him. Hopefully at least one of these people will prove to be this year’s Charlene White, who took Hancock to task last time around. When the time eventually came for him to meet the full intake of campmates, he was greeted with even more hugs and smiles. “Did he veer off a bit too far to the right?”, chirped Ant and Dec after a clip of Farage driving a car, to the clear delight of the people who are paid to laugh at them. Nor was Farage going to face appropriate interrogation from the hosts. The second contestant, 26-year-old YouTuber Nella Rose, was too locked into projecting her persona on to the public to even register who she was dealing with. “Can’t be worse than Brexit! Only joking! Ooh hoo!” she hooted of their first challenge.

Unlike last year, when Matt Hancock faced real hostility from his campmates, Farage found himself being warmly greeted by the first contestant to see him, a This Morning presenter called Josie Gibson. Wearing his nicest union jack socks, Farage was dropped in the middle of the Australian outback, and immediately couldn’t believe how easy he was going to have it.

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