Unsurprisingly, suddenly no one wants to know him.

“Remember there are other people in this interview, being Vikki and Seb, so if it was just an interview with me as a politician, sure, I am not going to charge for that,” he asks us to believe.

“But that is not what they wanted, they wanted an interview obviously to get Vikki’s side of the story and like most mothers she said: ‘Seeing as I am being screwed over and there are drones and everything over my house in the last fortnight, paparazzi waiting for me, if everybody else is making money then (I am) going to make money out of it’.”

So Barnaby, former deputy prime minister and determined gadabout, is painting himself as a poor sap unable to make his own decisions. Oh, dear.

The interview's ratings are, of course, just about guaranteed to be stratospheric.

A deputy prime minister, aged 50 and publicly devoted to wife and four daughters, suddenly falls for his 33-year-old staffer who gets pregnant. While awaiting the birth, Barnaby gives an interview in which he appears to throw doubt on whether or not he is actually the father. Meanwhile, he is busted to the backbench, and his prime minister declares himself so appalled by the whole thing he bans his ministers from any future sexual relationships with staffers.

Channel 7 undoubtedly figures $150,000 is a bargain, and Channel 9, which was said to be flapping its chequebook around, too, would be cursing.

In TV land, the definition of retail politics is political scandal that sells.

And here is the real point about this whole vulgar shambles.

Politicians, who are pretty well compensated from the public purse for doing the jobs they are elected to do, surely have no business accepting further monetary compensation for undertaking extra-curricular activities that excite nothing more than the baser instincts of the happily scandalised.

It is true there is no rule or regulation that denies a backbencher the right to take money for appearing on a television show.

There was no actual regulation that prevented Bronwyn Bishop, the then-speaker of the House of Representatives, from taking a helicopter from Melbourne to a function in Geelong, either.

But that doesn’t mean either of these examples of behaviour - and any amount of other political crash-and-burn stories - could be considered reasonable, as Bishop, for instance, finally discovered when her career collapsed around her.

Truth is, Barnaby Joyce might have been able to survive the turbulence surrounding his love life.

He is neither the first nor the last politician to be the subject of either fascination of loathing or both because of extramarital activities. Usually, the furore dies and the caravan moves on.

But Barnaby, in accepting a big cheque for his personal scandal - and then blaming his partner for the decision - has lost his judgment to the point he is currently being publicly disowned by his colleagues, from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to fellow Nationals backbenchers. Not a defender has emerged.

There will be no coming back from it.

No amount of money will have been worth the reputation of a man who once was known as the country’s leading retail politician.