Makerfield became the hottest entertainment spot in Britain as thousands crowded into the Burnham Man festival to vote for Andy the T-Shirt Mannequin and listen to his latest numbers: "Final Chance to Change" and "Hit the Road, Keir".
On the hard right stage, Reform UK's Bob the Plumber sung a sad ballad called "I Got Flushed Down the Toilet".
On the even harder right stage, Restore's Rupert Lowe, reprising his chosen role of human cockroach, entertained no one at all with his thrash metal rant: "Only 3,000 Votes? I'll Get You For This, You Bastards!"
And the BBC's Chris Mason did his ever popular act of stating the blindingly obvious with a monologue entitled: "There Might Be A Labour Leadership Contest, You Know".
Then, to the pensive strains of "Makerfield Of Dreams", festival goers drifted off, having realised that even if he did become PM there was little likelihood that Andy Burnham Man would do the job any better than Starmer.
Following Andy Burnham’s victory in the Makerfield by-election, Reform leader Nigel Farage has hit out at Restore Britain for “splitting the gammon vote”.
“I know Britain has a lot of irascible boneheads with a vague sense of discontent they’re not intelligent enough to process,” he told reporters today. “But it’s not an infinite number, and we have to beware of Johnny-come-latelies like Restore splitting their vote.
”Frankly, it’s bad enough some of them are still voting Reform-lite... I mean Conservative. I would have thought ‘one of them’ leading the party would be the last straw, but apparently not.”
But the leader of Restore, Rupert Lowe, hit back, saying it was entirely possible to be even madder than Farage, and he and his friends the dancing pink giraffes fully intended to exercise that right. However, he was then outflanked by a new party called Refresh, at which point the next ballot paper risks looking like a list of air fresheners.
For his part, Andy Burnham pointed out that splitting the vote was irrelevant as his tally was more than Reform and Restore put together. “Though to be honest I got that from Diane Abbott, so you’d probably better check it.”