“It’s been tough.” On a stage in Birmingham, before a crowd of thousands, Nigel Farage was baring his soul. “The last few days have been tough.” This is true. People have once again been making life difficult for Farage and his colleagues by recording things that they say and then broadcasting them. This, Farage has always felt, is cheating.

Everyone is out to get him

What is it that drives a man on through such trials? Ideals? Vanity? Patriotism? Or something more basic. Whatever it is, it must be a strong compulsion. Because Farage isn’t a victim of anything so simple as journalism. Far from it: there is a vast conspiracy against him. “When you threaten the establishment,” he explained, “they don’t exactly come out with a tray of gin and tonics.”

Everyone is out to get him. On Saturday evening, as he was speaking at a different event, a banner was slowly lowered behind him with a picture of top murderous dictator Vladimir Putin, and the slogan “I love Nigel”. Video of the event shows that, for a man who can give it out, Farage sure can’t take it. Did the man who has spent the election complaining that his critics are “boring” acknowledge that this was a stunt with a little wit? Did the man who trades so very hard on his self-image as a good bloke laugh it off? What do you think? As aides struggled to pull it down, Farage stood on stage demanding that someone be sacked.

But stage managers are only a part of the conspiracy. Farage revealed other layers to us at his pre-election rally on Sunday.

There was the audience on Question Time last week, who had revealed that they were communist stooges by failing to cheer him to the rafters.

There is the Reform activist who was recorded saying racist things to Channel 4. OR WAS HE A REFORM ACTIVIST?  Farage revealed he had known the man in question was a wrong ’un “from the minute he turned up in the Clacton office”. And yet, for some reason, he’d kept him around. Although Farage said he’d initially been “horrified” at the man’s words, he’d soon realised that “the whole thing was an act”. He explained: the simplest explanation for Channel 4 being able to record someone associated with Reform saying something dodgy was that they’d paid an actor to do it.

Was this, we wondered, true of all the other candidates that the party has had to disavow in the last month? Why are quite so many deeply unpleasant people attracted to a party that opened its election campaign with one of its candidates asking whether Adolf Hitler was so bad and closed it by explaining that Vladimir Putin was misunderstood? Perhaps they like the rosettes.

“Reform is a new organisation,” Farage explained. “Have we had a few bad apples? We have.” Keen followers of the campaign will be aware that the party claims to have been ripped off by the website it paid to vet its candidates. The problem may have been that to most of us, “candidate for Reform” is a pretty big red flag all on its own.

But for an optimistic man who just loves life, Farage really does have a lot of grudges

If this sounded self-pitying on screen, in the hall it was going down a storm. There were thousands of supporters there, and we can assume that plenty had their own story of the time they got into trouble because of something that they’d said which had been misunderstood. Or understood very well.

Maybe we had got Reform all wrong. “We believe in having fun and enjoying life and being optimistic,” Farage said, leading to the immediate thought that he is, once again, campaigning for a manifesto that he hasn’t actually read.

But for an optimistic man who just loves life, Farage really does have a lot of grudges. His rally was largely given over to listing the people who are doing him wrong. Not since Father Ted Crilly won the Golden Cleric has a celebratory speech involved quite so much score-settling. Farage’s targets were, in order: the BBC, NatWest, the BBC, the BBC, the Guardian, the BBC, the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, the EU, the BBC, the BBC, the BBC, the BBC, Channel 4, TikTok, and, finally, “anybody in the media, in politics”.

His audience loved it. He told them Reform would “abolish the BBC …” and paused just long enough for them to let out a huge cheer before he went on “… licence fee.” He smiled out at them. “You like that, don’t you?”

Why, we wondered? All through his speech, Farage had been talking about how happy he had been outside politics, how he had been making more money and flitting back and forth across the Atlantic. What was it that had brought him back? My assumption was that he’s a man who can’t live without a crowd, but it turns out there’s something much more basic.

He had listed the BBC’s crimes — asking him questions, broadcasting his answers — but finally we got to the big one: “Doctor Who, which I used to love, they’ve completely ruined.”

That’s it. That’s Farage’s inciting incident, his Rosebud, reason for doing what he does. Sadly, he didn’t explain how the children’s TV series had been spoiled for him. Was it the gays? The woman? The black guy? All of them? But I’m being unfair. Maybe he just hates the way that everyone is always ganging up on the Daleks.