Column: The pranking, and silencing, of Katie Hopkins

Their glorious stitching up of Katie Hopkins set the bar so high, even a nation weaned on Jeremy Beadles’ jolly japes and Dom Joly’s off-the-wall viral videos can only bow in a ‘we’re not worthy’ gesture.

The duo convinced the vile Hopkins to fly to Prague to accept a completely fake award.

And after bathing in the applause of her fellow dining guests – actors hired for their ability not to throw up when she spoke – she responded with a speech that spewed hatred, ignorance, prejudice and bile.

And, at the moment, any misplaced scintilla of sympathy you may have felt for the woman being mocked with the Campaign to Unify the Nation Trophy – yup, that does spell out what you think it says – was shredded.

She opened her mouth and at that very moment she revealed the inner, hollowed-out soul of a truly horrible human being.

It shouldn’t have shocked or surprised me. After all, Hopkins has long mined hatred and abuse as ways of making a living as part of the ‘alternative media’ – but this was abhorrent stuff served up as a knockabout after dinner speech.

She mocked and demeaned Asians and Muslims, sneered at people with autism and, bizarrely, labelled epileptics as weirdos. Hopkins herself was diagnosed with a particularly debilitating version of the condition – but this is a woman who doesn’t have a shred of empathy in her bones.

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She uses words to wound, to sneer, to mock and to put down – and to fit her own grotesque right wing agenda.

She revelled in the label of ‘Britain’s most hated woman’ and used her media columns and social media platforms to spray her vitriol everywhere.

She once described migrants as cockroaches, and, at the height of the refugee crisis, said: “Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water ... I still don’t care.”

She recently dressed as Meghan Markel for a video which bordered on the unhinged as well as being grossly offensive.

And when little Alesha MacPhail was brutally murdered on the Isle of Bute, she immediately played the race card, linking the island’s Syrian refugees with a spike in crime levels.

It was disgusting and false.

She knew it, She didn’t care. It fitted her narrative.

Hopkins was certainly a savvy media operator, but she built her audience on the back of fat shaming and mocking people before she ramped it up with right wing rhetoric.

She knew the impact, and power, of her words, and she used them like weapons, but, now, she is mute.

Her Twitter account of circa one million followers has been suspended.

That was her main platform – her Facebook and You Tube pages are tiny and also completely out of date.

Hopkins is one of many who play the free speech card in order to peddle hate speech.

Do not mourn her demise. Instead, breathe in the fresh air that replaces the stench of her odious views.