After days of speculation, Nigel Farage has finally confirmed that he has accepted ITV’s invitation to go into the jungle and join Ant and Dec and eleven fellow contestants on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!. It’s a decision he may come to regret.

Farage says he has been stoutly resisting offers to appear on the show since 2016, but has at last succumbed to their blandishments, chiefly because of the huge fee offered – reported to be up to £1.5 million. But this isn’t just about money: like many politicians, Farage is a showman and he says the show will give him a chance to ‘connect’ with the millions of young people who watch I’m a Celebrity but don’t watch TV news or read newspapers.

There’s no doubt that Farage has a chance to win over critics. While some of those who stood on the opposite side of the Brexit divide will never forgive Farage, he has undoubted ability and charisma, and a proven popular touch which has made him arguably the most influential and contentious public figure since Margaret Thatcher. Along with the equally Marmite outsize personality of Boris Johnson, he is either praised or more often blamed for being the chief architect of Brexit.

Matt Hancock, in particular, plumbed new abysses of public contempt

To declare an interest, I knew Farage fairly well when I stood as a Ukip Westminster and European parliamentary candidate. For all his manifest human faults (egotism, a touch of authoritarianism, excessive love of the limelight), I still admire Farage for his courage, humour, intelligence, and for tirelessly devoting a quarter of a century of his life to the noble cause of freeing Britain from the stifling, undemocratic grip of the EU. Quite simply, if it had not been for Nigel Farage, Brexit would not have happened.

Since the achievement of his life’s goal in the 2016 referendum, Farage has hardly opted for the low profile and quiet life he sometimes claims that he wants. With his unerring feel for a popular issue, he was one of the first to warn (on his then platform on LBC), of the Armada of small boats ferrying illegal migrants across the Channel that has since become one of the major hot buttons in our politics.

Then, in 2019, after quitting Ukip, he saw that Theresa May was busy betraying the Brexit he had fought for and decided to destroy her. He did this with clinical speed and thoroughness by creating the new Brexit Party from Ukip’s ashes, which promptly won the 2019 European Parliamentary elections, reducing the Tories to under 10 per cent of the total votes cast. May was duly defenestrated, Boris Johnson got Brexit done, and was returned with a whopping 80 seat majority (which he then wasted – but that’s another story).

Since then, Farage has kept himself busy in the headlines by inveighing against the Tories on GB News – though teasingly without ruling out returning to the party he once belonged to. His mistreatment at the hands of NatWest was another issue that he skilfully exploited. He has certainly, to quote Dylan Thomas, not gone gently into that good night.

So, as a critical fan of Farage, I have to ask if his decision to join the celebrity circus in the jungle is yet another demonstration of his track record of defying the establishment and reaching an audience that less gifted politicians cannot touch – or if he is making a major mistake. Did the reputation of fellow maverick George Galloway ever recover from him imitating a cat to lap milk from a saucer on another ridiculous reality show?

The examples of other politicians who have gone into the jungle before Farage are not exactly encouraging. Edwina Currie, Nadine Dorries, and, above all, Matt Hancock found the experience a bruising one that did little to enhance their (un)popularity with the public.

Without getting too pompous about it, however much we may have enjoyed watching these fools making idiots of themselves munching animal genitalia or wrestling with reptiles, the show does nothing to boost the dignity of the political class, or raise the already low level of respect that our ‘rulers’ enjoy.

Hancock, in particular, though finishing in third place, plumbed new abysses of public contempt with his pathetic whining performances on the programme. His £320,000 fee may have cushioned the discomfort he felt – especially as he only gave a paltry 3 per cent of it away to charity – but he did himself very few favours in terms of the subterranean esteem in which he is generally held.

Nigel Farage may not care for his personal popularity (he will, after all, be crying all the way to Lloyds: the one bank brave enough to have accepted his account). However, he is now honorary President of the Reform U.K. party, the Brexit Party’s populist successor. If he ever considers abandoning the broadcast studio and returns to the political arena once more, the spectacle of him losing his cool and poise in the company of lame-brained Z list celebrities in the jungle may come back to haunt him.