Did you see either of the two Nigel vs Nick Shows? I felt there was something rather sad about Mr Farage’s obvious delight at national coverage and at last being taken (semi-) seriously; and something even sadder about Mr Clegg’s desperate clinging to the dim memory of his life’s great triumph – outshining Messrs Brown and Cameron during the TV debates four years ago. How he must long for those glory days!

The reality is that Mr Clegg was trying to persuade the British people of something of which virtually none are persuadable – that ever closer union with Europe is somehow or another a good idea. In my 30 or so years of knocking on doors, I have never met a single person who thought that, which may explains the likelihood of annihilation of the Lib Dems at next month’s Euro-elections if current polls are anything to go by.

Mr Farage was tapping in to a much more promising seam of British public opinion. The people as a whole are instinctively Eurosceptic; and Mr F’s laddish charm has a natural appeal. His was the easier hand to play, and he did a good job of it.

Yet the tragedy is that even if he won; even if the British people agreed with him; there is no chance whatsoever of him becoming PM.

He cannot by any stretch of anyone’s imagination deliver on his Eurosceptic promise. So the debate was between no-mates Nick and no-hoper Nigel.

I suspect that mainstream British opinion is deeply unhappy with the EU; wants to see a fundamental renegotiation of the terms of our membership of it; and a chance to vote on whether or not to stay in it depending on the outcome of those negotiations.

That is precisely what the Conservative Party is offering; and, crucially, we, unlike UKIP, can actually deliver what we promise in this regard. We want to see a free trade area among independent nation states and an end to day-to-day interference by the Brussels Brotherhood.

So it was with some relief that I turned to the Grand National, the Boat Race, the Five Nations Rugby tournament. These are the kind of truly titanic struggles which we love – the greatest of athletes pitted one against the other. I waved goodbye to my constituents, Sark and Hempy this week as they set off to Morocco for the Marathon des Sables. Its the toughest race in the world – 151 miles in the heat of the Sahara. Man against the elements in a very real way. Neither Mr Clegg, nor Mr Farage would be up to anything like that and nor, I hasten to add, would I!