David Cameron thinks UKIP supporters are ‘pretty odd’. It’s a trait not unique to the party

David Cameron’s recent remark that some United Kingdom Independence party  supporters are ‘pretty odd people’ tickled me. My only problem with the insult was that he did not go further. He’s right that some UKIP supporters are pretty odd, but so are plenty of Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour supporters. Have you been to a branch meeting recently? If everyone else at that branch meeting was weird, how do you know that you’re normal? With this handy guide, that’s how.

First, do you have a nickname for the leader of the party? If you’ve answered no, you’re probably fine. If you’ve answered yes, you might be in trouble. A bloke at the first branch meeting I went to called Tony Blair ‘His Royal Blairness’. Amazing. Only I laughed. This nickname was also used in conjunction with the phrases ‘the powers-that-be’, ’in his infinite wisdom’ and, my personal favourite, ‘new lie-bore’. Mind you, I’m in no place to call him weird – I was 15 years old and attending branch meetings wearing an M&S jumper and too much Old Spice.

Second, have you given yourself a grandiose email address? I’m not talking about a practical one like [email protected] but one that makes you sound more elevated than you are. The answer is hopefully ‘no’, but there was one other young member who used to go to our local branch who had his email as [email protected]. He was 16. Not old enough to vote yet, but old enough to instruct civil servants. He was also old enough to have sex, but I’m not sure that will have been relevant to him.

Third, have you designed your own leaflet for a by-election, using Microsoft Word? That’s right, the party hasn’t got a clue how to design leaflets, so fire up the computer and design your own complete with Clip Art and LOADS OF CAPITAL LETTERS AND EXCLAMATION MARKS!!! USUALLY ABOUT WHAT THE LIBERALS ON THE LOCAL COUNCIL ARE DOING IN THE COMMITTEES!!! Make sure any text boxes don’t line up, and don’t forget to add in spurious gossip about the opposition. If you can’t find any relevant photos to use, draw your own. I wish I’d kept the leaflet where one of our council candidates had drawn a cartoon of a British National party supporter on the front page. Eating a bowl of soup. To this day I’ll never know why, but what a phenomenal detail to include.

Fourth, do you suffer from any of the following symptoms? Reading word-for-word every email that comes from the local or national party; saying things like ‘sorry I can’t come to the game tonight, I’ve got to go to a meeting on welfare reform’; watching old clips of past PMQs on YouTube when drunk; seeing a series called The Speaker’s Lectures on the Great Offices of State on BBC Parliament and thinking ‘ooh, I’ll series-link that’ … Just me on some of those? We’re all a bit odd; you’d have to be to care this much about politics. So I felt a bit bad for UKIP being singled out. If I worked for UKIP I’d have a sign made, inverting that old office classic: ’You don’t have to be pretty odd to work here …’ Yes, you can guess the rest: ‘You just have to have an irrational fear of Europe.’

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Matt Forde is a stand-up comedian and talkSPORT presenter. Matt Forde’s Political Party comes to the St James Theatre on 13 March. For tickets go to mattforde.com

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Photo: redspotted