The leader of the Eccentric Party – Lord Toby Jug – has been suspended from Facebook because the social networking website doesn’t believe he is using a real name.

Lord Jug, a musician from St Ives, attempted to log on to the website last Friday only to find his account had been suspended – pending an enquiry.

Setting up an account using a pseudonym or fake name is against Facebook’s policy and transgressors face being banned or having their accounts suspended.

But Lord Toby Jug is his real name, having been made official by way of deed poll in 1991. Lord Jug’s birth name is Brian Borthwick.

Lord Jug said: “It’s completely potty, they banish you to cyber space and then ask you to prove who you really are. The madness of it is that there’s no way of proving who you are to them, there’s no direct way of contacting a real person, it’s all computerised and you just go round in circles with them.

“It couldn’t have happened at a worse time, as I played a successful charity gig for the homeless at the Kingstock Music Festival on Sunday on bass guitar, and couldn’t promote it on Facebook.

“It’s a mad, mad, mad, world for sure and it’s getter madder.”

He was expelled from the Monster Raving Loony Party last year over comments he made about the UKIP leader Nigel Farage and the Wetherspoon’s pub chain which was, at the time, potential sponsors of the Loony Party.

After his expulsion from the party, he then founded the Eccentric Party, and stood against Boris Johnson in the 2015 General Election, winning a total of 50 votes.