Wouldn’t it be wonderful to hear what would be said at our own funeral? When Michael Gove attends next month’s An Evening With Michael Gove, at Westminster’s Emmanuel Centre, the backpedalling Brexiteer will emerge with some idea of the tone of his forthcoming political obituary.

An enterprising promoter should reboot the night as Michael Gove – This Is Your Life, the vengeful foundling wearing a little girl’s party dress, and crying hot tears of shame as he witnesses a series of grimy slides of his professional half-truths and failures.

The climax is a massive image of the chortling face of his nemesis, Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Disaster Weightloss Haircut Bullshit Wall-Spaffer Johnson. Gove realises it has all been for nothing. He could not even save the hedgehogs, let alone himself.

The landscape has changed, rapidly, since Gove agreed to be “in conversation with Spectator editor Fraser Nelson”, which is essentially the same as him being in conversation with himself, like the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movie, babbling his demented plans into a sympathetic mirror.

Sensible dialogue has ceased. The alt-right vomit out high-speed soundbites, before lumbering old-school wildebeest journalists can interrupt them with facts, and their followers swiftly repurpose these into potent online propaganda. Traditional resistance is futile. We have entered the Age of the Weaponised Milkshake. But is milkshake a legitimate form of protest?

During his appearances on the campaign trail, Ukip’s star candidate, the internet’s Carl Benjamin, has been assailed with a total of four milkshakes and a single fish. This is a paltry selection of foods on paper, but one which Our Lord Jesus could have used to feed 5,000 people. Or pelt roughly 3,570 Brexiteers.

To clarify, the fish that was flung at Carl Benjamin in Truro was dead, but no one from Ukip could confirm whether there was “enough beer” for Benjamin to consider raping it.

In Newcastle, on Monday, a Five Guys banana and salted caramel milkshake was thrown at Nigel Farage, and the alleged milkshaker, Paul Crowther, is being charged with assault with a Deadly Amount of Calories.

Last year, online fans of freedom defended the Ukip candidate Mark Meechan. He had taught his girlfriend’s pug to do Nazi salutes at the command “Gas the Jews!”, in much the same way as Farage has taught his Pavlovian followers to shout “fake news” every time a criminal investigation is mentioned.

Self-loathing liberals agreed Meechan’s actions were defensible because they were “a joke”. I don’t really know what I think about any of this any more, having found myself, over 35 years, on so many different sides of so many different arguments. But will the same voices rush to the defence of more physical, milkshake-based, comedy?

The Newcastle milkshake man, it could be argued, is acting in a tradition of slapstick clowning far more ancient and primal, and arguably more honest, than the supposed satire of our glib liberal values purportedly essayed by Meechan and Benjamin. The milkshake is flung from a realm of misrule recognisable to all cultures.

Indeed, the day before Farage was milkshaked, Leave EU issued an unauthorised, and now withdrawn, re-edit of a Beastie Boys video, showing him and Ann Widdecombe pouring beer over their political opponents.

Meechan doesn’t agree with milkshaking, and the satirist makes clear on Twitter that “anyone that comes at me with a milkshake will need the straw to eat their meals for the next few months. I don’t care how many cameras are rolling, you’ll be getting booted up and down the street.”

It is said that Meechan’s fellow satirist, Juvenal, issued a similar warning to ancient Greek critics, infuriated by his cavalier use of the dactylic hexameter, in the second century AD.

“Anyone that comes at me with honeyed barley gruel had better save the goblet for their teeth,” Juvenal said, “I don’t care how many chroniclers are inking their papyrus, you’ll be getting sandaled up and down the Acropolis.” But is our modern day lactose political protest legitimate?

I am regularly threatened with physical violence online, though I stopped noting it all down every day about a decade ago. Joycey, of readytogonet, I remember, wanted to beat me “with a shit-covered cricket bat”, while Hiewy, a YouTube viewer, told me he would “shove my thick cock down your throat you gay lord”.

To this day, I flinch whenever a stranger calls my name. To be fair, it’s usually a teenager who admits they don’t like my stuff themselves, but wants a selfie for their dad, who is a big fan, rather than a man readying his shit-covered cricket bat or thick cock.

But who knows what genuine fears flashed through Farage’s Brexit mind as milkshake loomed towards him in Newcastle. And yet…

Nigel Farage hit by milkshake while campaigning in Newcastle – video

On 14 May 2017, less than 11 months after the Remain MP Jo Cox was shot dead in the street by a Brexiter, Farage announced that “if they don’t deliver this Brexit, then I will be forced to don khaki, pick up a rifle and head for the front lines”.

Who still “dons” anything, apart from Nigel Farage, outside the late medieval period? The last time anyone “donned” anything it was Prince Valiant, with a tabard, in a 1940s Hal Foster newspaper comic strip. Anyone still donning anything is living in a mock-heroic fantasy.

Nonetheless, Farage’s desire to don himself and tool up represents his perceived frustration with the political process. And, likewise, the flinging of milkshakes represents a frustration with traditional media’s failure to hold the far right to account, with Farage now banning the dogged Channel 4 news from attending his public rallies.

Having no manifesto will not stick to Farage; not declaring his Aaron Banks funding to the EU will not stick to Farage; collaborating with Steve Bannon and Alternative Für Deutschland will not stick to Farage; describing the climate crisis as “a scam” will not stick to Farage; that “Breaking point” poster will not stick to Farage; lying about the EU army will not stick to Farage; nothing sticks to Farage, it seems. Except milkshake.