Nick Griffin thanked the BBC yesterday for the second time in a week, claiming that its decision to turn Question Time into a rigorous examination of his views had led to “thousands of pounds” in donations and a record number of membership inquiries.

As viewing figures showed that a peak audience of 8.3 million tuned in to the programme, almost unheard of so late in the evening, critics complained that the change in the show’s format had allowed Mr Griffin to present himself as the victim of a liberal conspiracy.

Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, said: “The damage has been done and it is enormous. The BNP likes to portray itself as standing up for the ordinary man against the liberal elite, and the BBC has played right into that sense of victimhood that the BNP thrives upon.”

Yesterday Mr Griffin said he had been “ganged up on” by the other members of the panel and that he was not given a proper opportunity to explain his views. “The BBC has committed a very serious error. It’s shot itself in the foot big-style,” he said.

“Millions of people are angry about the way I was treated,” Mr Griffin added before reusing a phrase he had denied saying in an interview with The Times. “Thank you, Auntie, for misreading the situation so catastrophically.”

His fellow panellist Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, said the BNP leader should stop whingeing: "If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

Four out of five of the questions put to the panel referred exclusively to the BNP, with the fifth, which referred to the outrage caused by a newspaper column about the death of Stephen Gately, the Boyzone singer, seemingly serving as a way to trap Mr Griffin into calling homosexuals “creepy”.

As William Hill cut its odds on the BNP winning a seat at the next general election from 10-1 to 7-2, Mr Hain, who led a campaign to stop the BBC featuring Mr Griffin, said the show had backfired. “He was exposed for the racist and the Nazi he is to the mainstream audience,” he said. “But it was also the case that to his constituency and anybody vaguely sympathetic to his views, he would have been seen as a person that the rest of the panel were ganging up on.

“The BBC has given him the biggest boost the BNP has ever had and I think the jury is out on how this will play in the medium term. It’s incredibly naive to think that this means that their support will deteriorate.”

Mr Griffin walked around Grays Beach in Essex yesterday, clasping a piece of paper that read “boxing match” and “knife fight”. Simon Darby, the BNP deputy leader, said Mr Griffin had planned to tell the media that he turned up to Question Time expecting a boxing match, but instead got a knife fight.

An analysis of the show for The Times showed that the cameras spent 38 per cent of the hour-long programme, nearly 25 minutes, focused on Mr Griffin, or a “two-shot” with him and another panellist. The BBC received about 250 complaints that the programme was biased against Mr Griffin, coupled with another 100 from people who believed that he should not have been on in the first place. But one senior BBC executive said last night that the corporation was pleased with the public reaction.

“We’re not dancing in the aisles,” he said. “But if it had to come out one way or the other we would rather that people thought it was too tough.”

The corporation is understood to have no plans to feature Mr Griffin on the programme before next year’s general election, but if the party maintains its current level of support he will appear in future editions.

Mark Byford, the deputy director-general, said: “As ever, this edition of Question Time saw tough questioning from the studio audience and chairman David Dimbleby, putting all the panellists on the spot on a range of subjects. As with every edition of Question Time, the audience wrote the questions, and guided the topics chosen.

“Clearly Mr Griffin and the BNP were the subject of intense questioning, but all the panellists were given the opportunity to respond and to have their voices heard, thus allowing audiences to form their own views.”

Mr Griffin sought more publicity by saying he was lodging a formal complaint with the BBC and wanted the show rerun. At the same time the BNP said the show gave it its “single biggest recruitment night” in the party’s history. While it cannot currently accept new members because of legal action over its whites-only policy, it claimed that 3,000 people had registered to be members. The party also claimed that it had received thousands in donations.

Mr Griffin complained that the programme was filmed at BBC Television Centre, in the ethnically diverse borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, West London. “Of course the audience was going to be hostile,” he said. “It should have been in Dagenham or Barking or Thurrock, Stoke or Burnley. Instead it was the old parties ganging up on the new boy.”

Mr Griffin was accused of sour grapes because his performance, which he had hoped would give him legitimacy and credibility on a national stage, was widely panned in the press.

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