The Haltemprice & Howden by-election is full of grumpy old men. There are 26 candidates and all of them seem to be angry about something. Indeed, as my train draws into the delightful village of Brough, I get a phone call from David Icke (yes, the one who used to be Son of God) and he actually seems to be breathing fire.

“What’s the point of me talking to you?” he spits by way of an introduction.

“Well, I’m up here covering the by-election . . .” I begin. The media, he snaps, is not taking him seriously (“Big Brother, The Big Picture” is his campaign theme). “You want to take the p***, so take the p***! You don’t need to talk to me to do that!”

I say that I have read that he is running in the by-election but doesn’t want to be an MP. Why would anyone do that? “Of course I don’t want to be an MP!” he explodes. I try to probe further but he stops me: “There’s no point, darling.”

It must be catching for, very soon, I too begin to wonder what, exactly, is the point of this by-election. David Davis resigned in a blaze of incandescent glory (or at least of television lights), saying he wanted to fight for liberty and freedom.

Many of his constituents think it’s a waste of time and money, both of which are more or less sins in Yorkshire. The result is that many are not voting. The lowest peace-time voter turnout since 1918 in a by-election was 19.9 per cent for Hilary Benn in Leeds Central, in 1999. Could DD set a new low on Thursday?

It’s entirely possible. Yesterday even DD had fled his own by-election, skedaddling down to London where there are no voters but many TV cameras. So I found myself in a by-election with no defending candidate and none from the main opposition parties. It was all rather twilight zone. But at least there was William Hague, who had popped up to do a walkabout for DD in Cottingham village. Within minutes he was being screamed at by a man with a leaflet (he had to be a candidate).

“Come and debate with me!” the man shouted, running alongside Mr Hague, thrusting his leaflet forward. “Don’t be such a coward! Have a word!”

Mr Hague tried, in vain, to ignore him. This turned out to be Eamonn “Fitzy” Fitzpatrick, a market trader from Northampton who is standing as an independent.

He says the voters are with him in favour of 42 days’ detention. “I’ve been here ten days, darling! I know!” he shouts even though we are standing next to each other on the pavement. Fitzy says he is for common sense and then tells me he came here by taxi, for £170. “Why?” I ask and he looks at me as if I am an idiot.

The Hague walkabout had almost ended when yet another man jumps in to give Mr Hague not a leaflet but an abacus. This turns out to be another candidate, John Nicholson, a former pig farmer who admits being angry about many things. He is running as an independent. “But I’m an anarchist really,” he says. But surely, I said, that should be an abacist because, within seconds of meeting, he had whipped out three abacuses, including one that he invented.

He wants all the children in the world (this is global) to use his abacus method to learn maths. I don’t see why not. It’s as sane as anything else in this bonfire of the inanities.

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