IF ANYTHING is guaranteed to send my blood pressure into geyser mode, it is the sight or sound of Nick Griffin being interviewed as if he were just another politician and not a leader of the loathsome oafish tendency.

Griffin - I'll drop the mister, if that's all right - fronts the British National Party, the Far Right squad in our politics. However hard it is to swallow, the BNP was successful in last month's election.

According to Searchlight, the anti-fascist campaign, "There is no disguising the BNP's success. In Oldham West and Royton, party leader Nick Griffin polled 16.4 per cent of the vote, the largest vote ever for a fascist party in a parliamentary election."

Both before and after the election, Griffin, a Cambridge-educated, suit-wearing lawyer, popped up on the Today programme, Newsnight, Channel 4 News, and Tonight With Trevor McDonald, doing the rounds like a seasoned politico, parrying blows with Jeremy Paxman or James Naughtie, and generally being treated like a normal politician instead of someone who fronts a party built on race hate.

The comparative success of the BNP may strike some of us as an acrid stain on the ballot paper, but it is a truth, however unpalatable. It is to be hoped that this is a quirk, a wobble, an aberration. The Far Right has risen before, most notably in the 1970s when the National Front was the party of ill-choice, but usually it fades, even if the stain never quite goes away, however much Mr Muscle is used.

A pinch of perspective is required here, for the BNP, although more successful than ever, is still a fringe party, a nasty pimple on the bum of British politics. Just like a pimple, it sticks out and causes its host some discomfort.

There are probably a number of reasons for this mini upsurge in BNP support, the first being opportunism.

While clever is not a word one likes to use in such company, the BNP is certainly astute in the ways of exploitation.

While New Labour and the Conservatives talked up asylum as an electoral issue, the BNP saw its opportunity and nipped in there, tapping into the ill-informed discontent that had been stirred up by the main parties.

Some commentators point the blame further at New Labour, arguing that Tony Blair's obsession with appealing to the middle classes has left many of its traditional white supporters feeling alienated and no longer represented, and therefore at the mercies of the BNP.

No less a body than the United Nations maintained this week that British politicians are stoking racial hatred with inflammatory remarks on asylum and immigration, while Amnesty International said that comments by Labour and Tory politicians had exposed asylum-seekers to violence.

As to Griffin, he knows how to manipulate the moment, as he announced his candidacy two days after a cowardly attack on an elderly white man by three young Asians. He thrives on race riots, adding petrol and a match with comments such as: "There is, I am sure, a lot more to come. It is remarkable no one has been killed yet."

It is even more remarkable that Nick Griffin swans in and out of the television studios as if he were an elected politician, rather than an extremist who - and we can only hope this is the case - struck a little bit lucky in a few areas.

Paxman and his fellow interviewers should either sharpen their teeth or, best of all, ignore Griffin altogether.

IN response to the Greenpeace protesters who invaded RAF Menwith Hill to further their objection to the US Missile Defence Plans, the Ministry of Defence told this newspaper's reporter that the "only new construction work was on the equivalent of bike sheds".

For some reason, this amused me so much that I was still chuckling when I cycled home on my missile.