We live in baffling times. Who, for example, can explain why Boris Johnson is still a thing? And why has no one told Ed Miliband that continually addressing a large number of strangers in a room as “friends” is just the sort of weirdness that someone whose weirdometer needle is already hovering over the danger zone should really avoid doing.

And then there’s Michael Gove.​ Just baffling.

But nothing is quite as baffling as the appeal of UKIP. That a bunch of fear-peddling, isolationist, blame-everyone merchants seem attractive to a large minority of the British public is not just confusing: it’s embarrassing.

So we’re doing what any sane, politically-aware progressives would do: we’re writing a spoof cookbook about it. Obviously.

The (Unofficial) UKIP Cookbook will be written from the perspective of your classic Little Englander. It will incorporate all the misguided nonsense that is peddled to them by Farage et al, whilst talking up nasty British slop and disparaging gorgeous foreign nosh.

Why a cookbook? Well, food is one of the most obvious and uncontroversial areas where foreign influence has clearly and incontrovertibly improved British life over the past 50 years. So having our UKIP-loving made-up author (Nigèle Lafarage, we’re calling him) attempt to spin it as a negative seemed appropriate.

We had a publishing deal in place for the book a couple of months ago and all was set for a traditional release in time for Christmas, when a big high street bookstore (there’s only really one left, so you can probably guess who they are) said that it was “sailing too close to the wind”. Given that there is no offensive language in the book (unlike the a book of ours they sold last year called “Wanksy“) we can only assume that they mean that it is sailing too close to the wind politically. Which is disturbing… not to mention, well, baffling.

So we’ve decided to put the book out there ourselves, and as such, we’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign to help us with the publishing costs. If you could see your way clear to help out a couple of baffled comedy writers and pre-order your copy of the book in the process, that’d be fantastic. Any pledge, no matter how small, would be very much appreciated and would help the book to get made. You can see the video and blurb we put together here.

In more than ​a decade of writing political satire, this has to be the most interesting time of our career. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so real.

* Marc Blakewill & James Harris write comedy for television, including Russell Howard's Good News and Horrible Histories. The (Unofficial) UKIP Cookbook is due out in November, funding permitting.