Conservative Party members have a certain reputation. And the reputation they have surprises me, largely because the few that exist are totally invisible. If it were not for the occasional wry article in the Guardian, or the odd bit of juice spilled by failed candidates and disgruntled former apparatchiks, paid-up Tories remain a mysterious bunch.

I graduated in 2000, and my first 'proper job', if that term could ever be accurately used in this instance, was as a Trainee Agent for the Tory Party. Remove 'Trainee' and replace with 'dogsbody', 'tea maker', 'verbal punch bag', 'abuse taker' and 'taxi driver' at will, for the 'Trainee' bit only served to support the mistaken notion that this job was a career.

The truth was that the job entailed spending much of your time ensconced in the company of the most surreal species on the face of the planet: Tory activists.

My first posting was in Southampton. Under the tutelage of a neurotic creature named Sylvia, who wore huge furry coats and insisted upon driving everywhere in second gear, I was to lend a hand where possible within four constituencies down in Hampshire: Southampton Test, Southampton Itchen, Eastleigh and the Isle of Wight.

My illusion of the party being a competent organisation at local level took around twenty minutes to shatter when I turned up for my first day at the Test office. A gaggle of tea-obsessed hags, who sat around the breadcrumb scattered table as though druids at Stonehenge, ignored my feeble requests for accommodation advice, and, instead, muttered darkly about the cost of pens, immigrants and the new shopping complex.

Finally, the ladies mentioned the services of Mrs Rose Pell, an ancient owner of a B&B and known Tory member, who would put me up in the same way as she did my predecessor.

And I found myself at the hands of a lonely and highly possessive spinster. Whilst she charged reasonable rent, she insisted upon sneaking into my room when I was at work and taking away my personal items for 'cleaning and ironing'. It turned out she did not like the Tories at all, or indeed any of the local activists.

But, much to my horror, she did like the company of naïve young men that could fulfil the role of grandson. All I needed was a stick and hanky, a coal-smeared face and a fear of my master's cane. I had gone back in time, and I hated every second.

Most mornings, I woke to the sound of Mrs Pell creeping outside my room. Then I would call Sylvia to find out what I needed to do. The manic screech on the other end of the line would tell me to complete such heavy duty tasks as giving someone a lift from a funeral, attend a council meeting or delivering leaflets to swathes of streets accompanied by bitter grannies and deaf squadron leaders.

The sober consideration that I was, in fact, a type of postman tempered my despair about my presence amidst a sea of age, decay and blind ignorance – except of course, postmen get paid more and fewer people hate them.

With the local campaigns in Southampton looking like a Nascar pile up in slow motion, I went back, cap-in-hand, to Central Office to ask for a re-assignment.

I got Ealing, and began work in a freezing wooden hut in Greenford. Two clunky electric heaters, and a lone computer, were all I had to provide me with company and the necessary heat to fight back hypothermia.

Local party members, with important sounding positions in the Association, and councillors would turn up at executive council meetings. Together, they would spend the night congratulating themselves for such accolades as good attendance at other meetings and saving enough money to fix the printer.

And there were certain similarities between these meeting attendees. All of them were blessed with the ability of being able to walk, leave their homes and arrange transport to the office without collapsing into a heap of withered bones – unlike the rest of the members.

Bizarrely enough, the only other person to realise everything was a farcical freak show was the candidate Charles Walker. The pain whenever he handed out a leaflet at schools with large ethnic minority student populations, proclaiming to "get tough on immigration", was etched all over his baby face. Sadly, he had no choice in what was on the election material, and neither did I.

For the association was firmly in the grip of a small cadre of right-wingers that would enlighten me with such pearls of wisdom as 'we don't want anymore f*cking mosques' and 'this area used to be good before the f*cking Asians moved in'.

Sadly, after Liam Fox told us the party would lose before the start of a fundraising dinner and a gang of kids on bikes called Theresa Villiers a 'moose' while she was out canvassing, I had seen and heard enough.

When Ann Widdecombe stared blankly at me whilst a 23-year-old local councillor punched me repeatedly in the arm as a prank, my sanity began to fray.

I straddled this old people's home cum lunatic asylum like a quivering tower of Jenga. I collapsed the day after the general election, and handed my notice in. I drove away from the wooden hut – and the stinking, fetid, blocked outdoor toilet – for the last time. I never looked back.