So that's it. The unthinkable has happened - and the world did not end.
Yes, sadly and horribly, Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, did appear on the BBC's Question Time. The morning papers' consensus appears to be that Griffin was given a thorough going-over by the rest of the panel and came out of the event rather badly.
I am not sure. Certainly Griffin spent much of the evening with a sweaty rictus grin pasted to his face, barely flinching when chairman David Dimbleby, in best headmaster style, asked him why he was laughing at a question over the Holocaust. "That's not funny", said Dimbleby, sharply, as though Griffin were a naughty schoolboy to whom he had just given a bad house point.
My concern is what happens next. Now that Griffin has appeared on the BBC and a new norm has been established, what about the next time round? How will the BBC argue itself out of any approach by the BNP for a second, third or fourth appearance? This seems to me to have set an unfortunate precedent. For all the arguments that Griffin's repellent ideologies do have a place in a healthy democracy, the fact remains that he and his fellow BNP members would never give the same right of reply to their political opponents. This whole affair has left a really nasty taste in the mouth - and Mark Thompson, the BBC's director-general, is going to have to think long and hard about what he does in the future in relation to the BNP.