Ukip councillor David Silvester's claim that widespread flooding across the UK was caused by the legalisation of gay marriage was hardly the first unusual suggestion by a member of the fourth party.

It was just the latest in a long line of bizarre, insulting and outlandish quotes from the party that once branded gay rights a "lunatics' charter". David Cameron called Ukip members "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists" before changing his tune to "pretty odd people".

Here is our pick of the most ridiculous - and abusive - Ukip quotes to date:

1. David Silvester, who called homosexuality a "spiritual disease", said: "Since the passage of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act, the nation has been beset by serious storms and floods. One recent one caused the worst flooding for 60 years. The Christmas floods were the worst for 127 years. Is this just global warming or is there something more serious at work?"

2. In an investigation led by the Sunday Mirror, Dr Julia Gasper said: "As for the links between homosexuality and paedophilia, there is so much evidence that even a full-length book could hardly do justice to the ­subject."

3. Speaking on the same issue, Ukip member Jan Zolyniak claimed: "The evidence is quite clear that the percentage of homosexuals who molest children is very high and cannot be dismissed."

4. Douglas Denny, of the Bognor Regis branch in West Sussex, said homosexuals have "leftie, neo-commie followers". He said: "I just wish they would keep their ­homosexual nature and practices to ­themselves and stop trying to ram it down my throat telling me they are 'normal' when they are not."

5. It wouldn't be a complete list without the wisecracking Godfrey Bloom. The Yorkshire and Humber MEP had the whip removed in September 2013, after a recording emerged of him joking that a group of Ukip women who did not clean behind their fridges were "sluts".

6. In August, Bloom came under fire after referring to countries that received government aid as "Bongo Bongo Land". He claimed that UK aid was being spent on fighter planes in Pakistan, as well as luxury sunglasses. He said: "How we can possibly be giving £1bn a month, when we're in this sort of debt, to Bongo Bongo Land is completely beyond me."

7. Stuart Agnew, Ukip MEP for the East of England, suggested that women lacked the ambition to succeed because children got in the way. Following the footsteps of Bloom, he argued: "If you look at the people who get degrees more, women get them and they are getting the jobs in the workplace but for various reasons they don't have the ambition to go right to the top because something gets in the way. It's called a baby."

8. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's The World At One in August, Stuart Wheeler, party treasurer, said women were "nowhere near as good as men" at chess, bridge and poker.

9. Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader said women with children were "worth less" than men in the financial sector. He claimed women with children were responsible for their own reduction in pay if they have children – because they take maternity leave and become less valuable to their businesses.

10. Farage also prioritised lower economic growth and a poorer Britain over an increase in migrants in the UK. "The social side of this matters more than pure market economics," he said.