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“It does seem unusual, doesn’t it,” he says. “I mean, ‘what the’?"

“But it’s very simple in truth. I’m profoundly concerned about the denial of the result of the [2016 EU] referendum… On balance I was in favour of Brexit, that was my preference, and the thing that’s really got me going and the reason I’m here is the denial of that democratic decision.

“I think it’s profoundly dangerous for British society.”

Punchard, 62, is from a South Devon family and studied political theory at university and in the 1980s worked the highly dangerous job of deep sea diver on North Sea oil rigs.

He was so incensed about poor safety standards that he became a union organiser and was involved in calling North Sea divers out on strike against the Thatcher government in 1984.

He hopes this background will help him put a dent in the 20 per cent majority of the sitting Labour MP, Alan Campbell, a former junior minister who is the party’s deputy chief whip and has held the seat since 1997.

Punchard says he applied online for a job as Brexit Party candidate and asked for a North Sea seat. He was given one that voted 52 per cent to Remain in the EU – a tough ask. But he’s happy to be here.

“I’ve got my nose pressed to the double glazing right now looking at the crashing waves, it’s a different kind of beauty but it reaches into my soul because I used to work out there at the bottom of the ocean,” he says.

One night he was working in that sea and “the oil rig blew up above my head”, he says.

It was the Piper Alpha platform, 200km north-east of Aberdeen, where an explosion and resulting fire killed 167 people, while only 61 escaped, making it the worst offshore oil disaster in terms of lives lost and industry impact.

“I climbed down a rope,” he says, simply, of his escape.

And the moment was an “epiphany”. He worked with the bereaved, campaigned intensively for safety standards, but then moved to Australia because “I knew I would be at risk mentally if I carried on being a crazy campaigner”.

And there he started a new life, studying maritime archaeology, making a film about a shipwreck, and now, 300 films later, is one of the country’s most successful documentary makers.

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“I still care about workers and working conditions,” he says. “But I’m a wealth creator, a job creator. I know the best way to pay for a nation’s healthcare and welfare services is to have a good economy which I do believe is driven by entrepreneurs.”

This, he says, will help him appeal to Tynemouth’s Conservative voters.

He doesn’t believe the consensus among economists that the “clean break” Brexit his party champions will severely hurt the UK economy. He says there were similar “predictions of doom and gloom” made before the referendum that did not come to pass.

Punchard says it hasn’t been an easy decision.

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“I find myself in many respects deeply uncomfortable about the whole thing,” he says.

He is a “liberally minded person” and the “vast majority” of his peers do not agree with him on Brexit, he says. Some close friends have written “hurtful” emails to him about his decision.

But he says he found the leading Brexit Party figures “reasoned and reasonable” and “I looked up what they were saying and couldn’t see anything crazy, extreme or unpalatable; I couldn’t see any nasty racist stuff”

“I saw diversity in the people I was dealing with and I saw their politics were from everywhere.”

On Friday Labour announced free full-fibre broadband for every home in the UK.

There is no filmmaker alive who doesn’t want faster, more reliable internet.

“On a personal level I’m in favour of it in that sense,” says Punchard. “But how do you achieve something like that? The Brexit Party policy is for free internet on all public transport, and that’s far more achievable.”