The National Union of Students went to war with him, and Muslim organisations decried him. One awarded him with the title “Islamophobe of the Year”, which he pledged to celebrate with “wine, scotch, and women”. He still says he feels concerned when he sees British Muslim women wearing a niqab and is pledging to campaign for a national referendum on the issue.

“I feel terrified," he says. "Not for me, but for them. I feel absolutely mortified that they have grown up in an environment where they are taught that they have to cover their faces. Naturally, you don’t cover your face. They have been indoctrinated.

“Don’t forget, I know how it feels. I grew up in Islam. I know how the guilt feels when someone asks if you’re going to mosque this week. It really hits you.”

Are your parents bothered by criticisms of Islam?

“I’m sure they are, we just don’t talk about it – it’s better that we just don’t talk about it. They’re getting older, becoming more spiritual.”

So why spend so long campaigning on the issue?

“I really want to keep this country as the country that my parents like, for the sake of my theoretical children. How can I shirk the responsibility of being somehow who intrinsically knows the enemy?”

By this point he had become a pundit, and sought funding from “pro-Israel, anti-Islamism” American neocons to run a blog called The Commentator with fellow activist Robin Shepherd. The pair split in incredibly acrimonious circumstances in 2013.

"Working with Raheem Kassam was a nightmare,” Shepherd said when contacted by BuzzFeed News this week. “I formally reported him to the police on suspicion of fraud. Since I had never before reported anyone to the police, perhaps a reasonable observer might wonder why that seemed necessary. Kassam is a psychopath, and a crook. Kassam is a nasty piece of work, and prides himself on being so. Being a ‘wrong ’un’ is something he relishes, as do the shabby characters who associate with him.

"Raheem Kassam is a danger to British democracy, and the rule of law. I saw at first-hand behaviour that was so appalling it was, and remains, difficult to internalise."

In response, Kassam says Shepherd wrongly accused him of taking thousands of pounds from the blog when the business venture collapsed: “We never codified the relationship between us. When we had a bust-up he said I was sacked.”

Kassam said he went back to the American donors. “I said, who do you want to keep the money? Me or Robin?” He says the donors chose him, much to the anger of Shepherd, who struggled to deal with this and has written furious posts about the situation ever since.

Next up was a brief initial stint at Breitbart, where he edited future alt-right pro-Trump troll star Milo Yiannopoulos, then a fringe figure on UK politics looking for a home. Kassam says he doesn’t get on with Yiannopoulos: “We see the world in two very different ways. … He has a certain belief system and knows how to get the attention so that people are reading about his belief system. I could do that and pour pig blood over myself in a New York museum, but it’s just not me." Yiannopoulos declined to comment.

But it was a 2014 trip shadowing Nigel Farage in New York that gave Raheem his break. The UKIP leader was appearing on Fox News (Kassam is not a fan of the channel's opinionated stance: “I like my news to be newsy”) when staff there asked the pair called up to see “the boss”. Initially Farage and Kassam thought they meant the producer of the show, but quickly realised they meant Fox’s owner, Rupert Murdoch.

“We were whisked upstairs, they thought I was [Farage’s] bag carrier, and a doddery old man comes out and says, [adopts Australian accent] ‘Hello, mate.' Then the two of them disappeared into a private room. I’ve never liked the Murdoch papers, so it was a bit belly-of-the-beast.”

He was hired as Farage’s chief of staff, providing advice while writing columns for the Daily Express and running his social media. In a last-ditch attempt to get Farage into parliament after they realised his campaign to take the seat of Thanet South was going wrong, the pair ended up sharing a flat in the Kent town and indulging in lengthy “PFLs” – their code for “proper fucking lunches”, involving multiple bottles of wine.