Christian Fuchs is chuckling long before he finishes telling the story behind his surprise 30th birthday party and how one of the guests got the date wrong. The Leicester defender celebrated the landmark at a local restaurant, where team-mates joined family and friends 72 hours before last Sunday’s win over Sunderland, yet it turned out the small print had escaped the attention of a certain Italian. In a moment of comedy gold, Claudio Ranieri walked into an empty room the day before and wondered where everybody was hiding.

“That’s the best question you could ask me,” Fuchs says, breaking into laughter when the subject is brought up. “My wife, who had organised the party, told me the story after we arrived on the evening. Jon Sanders, the player liaison officer, had sent Claudio the invite, saying: ‘Can you come by for an hour, it would be great.’ Claudio probably didn’t look at the invite, only where it is and not the date, and he just went there.

“He contacted Jon and was like: ‘Hell, Sando, where is this party? I’m on the first floor, second floor, nobody is here!’ So the next evening I put Claudio on the spot, because I wanted him to tell his story to everybody there. I did a little speech, then I called him up. He said that Jon Sanders is now only working for the academy.

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“So in the end Claudio came to my birthday twice and that’s an even bigger honour. I couldn’t believe he was there – I don’t think there are too many managers that would show up. And he was smiling, enjoying the party, not worrying that I had one or two glasses of red wine. Claudio’s a great character.”

The same can be said for Fuchs, who has the sort of personality that lights up a room. Gregarious, down to earth and blessed with an utterly bonkers sense of humour, Fuchs is terrific company over breakfast at Leicester’s training ground and it is easy to see why he is such a popular figure at the club. At one point he is up on his feet shouting, putting on an angry face at the end of an answer about how things unravelled for him at Schalke last season. “I’m over it, OK?” Fuchs says, narrowing his eyes and leaning over the table. “No, for real, I’m over it!”

Signed from the Bundesliga club in the summer, Fuchs has become a cult figure among Leicester supporters, owing in no small part to his wacky social media videos that often feature bizarre challenges with team-mates, including taking it in turns with Shinji Okazaki to flick each other’s ears after a game of paper-scissors-stone and playing egg roulette against Jamie Vardy. “No Fuchs Given” is the play on words that has taken on a life of its own and now led to him launching his own fashion range.

Yet the Austria captain is much more than the dressing-room joker; he is also a highly accomplished left-back and Gary Lineker was not allowing personal allegiances to colour his judgment when he recently described Fuchs as “underrated” and said he was nailed on to be in his Premier League team of the season.

“It’s nice of him to mention me,” Fuchs says. “Obviously we have other players that are having all the glory right now, with Jamie, with Riyad [Mahrez], with [Danny] Drinkwater as well. And those guys deserve it, they are performing outstanding – but it’s simply a whole team on the field that’s giving the best, that’s always trying to achieve the maximum, and the same with the players on the substitutes’ bench. And I think this spirit is the key to our success.”

The big question is whether Leicester can see the job through and complete what will go down as one of the most remarkable stories in the history of football. They host West Ham United on Sunday seven points clear with five games remaining, and in some people’s eyes it feels like Leicester’s title to lose. Fuchs bristles at that suggestion and makes an interesting analogy with a French comic book series and the indomitable Gauls fending off Roman occupation to explain Leicester’s mindset.

“We never said at all that this is our goal to win the championship. People can talk whatever they want, we never get affected by it. So many people were talking at the beginning of the season, saying: ‘It’s only a matter of time before they break down’. You know what we did? Like Asterix and Obelix we just stayed safe in our little cottage, we tried to fight all these guys out there, we never listened to all those people talking, only focused on our strengths. Claudio has played a big part in that because he is always drilling us: ‘Next game, next game, next game’ and that’s worked fine so far.

“I want to win a title. Any title – that’s what I’m playing football for. I came to Schalke in 2011 and the first game I played was a derby against Dortmund, it was the Super Cup and we won. I was holding that trophy thinking: ‘Wow.’ So of course I want to win something in my career but it only works step by step. We play until now with that philosophy, to think game by game and we won’t change it.”

Fuchs talks a lot about the camaraderie within the Leicester squad – he describes being in “a wonderland” because he is experiencing the same sense of togetherness with a resurgent Austria team – and his spine still tingles at the memory of the way the team celebrated Vardy’s record-breaking goal against Manchester United in November. With an exquisite “no look” pass, Fuchs delivered the ball Vardy arrowed beyond David de Gea to score for the 11th successive Premier League match.

“The pass was great and the goal was great,” says Fuchs, “but for me, when the guys were standing together at the far corner celebrating, there was such an electrifying atmosphere. It was like: ‘Wow.’ I can still feel it now. Everybody was there, so happy for Vards to break this record. It’s hard for me to describe that, it was a simply outstanding moment in my career.”

Spirit can carry a team a long way but Fuchs acknowledges Leicester are much more than a group of players who run the extra yard for one another. “We have quality as well. We don’t have the money like Manchester City or Arsenal. We don’t have the big stars. Or let’s say we didn’t have the big stars at the beginning of the season.

“I think now a lot of our players have developed into stars and we have very good individuals in each position. When those players are in form and they also work together, then you can achieve something without the use of too much money.”

Fuchs, who joined Leicester on a free transfer, is a case in point. He is another name to add to the long list of success stories belonging to Steve Walsh, Leicester’s joint assistant manager and the club’s head of recruitment, yet not everything went to plan in the beginning. Nigel Pearson was sacked as manager before he had chance to meet him and Fuchs had to wait until 3 October to make his first Premier League start. Once Fuchs got into the team, however, he never looked back.

His wife, Raluca, and their children, 16-month-old Anthony and seven-year-old Ethan, live in New York and fly over to England every two to three weeks. Fuchs will move to the United States permanently when the time is right with his football career, although his reputation already precedes him there – last week his name was up in lights on the news ticker in Times Square after he gave a TV interview that went viral in which he talked about the possibility of becoming an NFL kicker one day. “A fan sent me the picture,” Fuchs says, shaking his head. “At first I thought it had been photoshopped and that it was a joke. Wow.”

As for his antics on social media, Fuchs says it is a case of “being myself”, whether that means doing keepie-uppies with a medicine ball, juggling baby formula in a supermarket or playing a game of “red ass” with Robert Huth. Fuchs offers an interesting insight into his mind when asked why he selected Huth for a game that involved lashing a ball as hard as possible at the other person’s backside. “First of all he is the right character to do it with but also because he has a really hard shot and I just wanted to get hit by him, because I knew it’s going to look great,” he says, grinning. “And as well as looking great, it also hurt. I had to go down on my knees, because it didn’t hit my arse, it hit the back of the thighs and this is even worse.”

Training is about to start and Fuchs need to dash but there is just one final question: what does he make of the man who came to his birthday party … twice?

“To be fair, for an Italian he is very funny,” Fuchs says. “Every day Claudio is asking me: ‘Oh, you are here?’ I don’t know why he is saying that but that’s kind of his joke. At some point I realised it’s funny. The more you hear it, the more it becomes a joke. I’m like: ‘OK, he’s repeating it again.’ He’ll say: ‘Oh, you’re here. Where have you been yesterday?’ I’m like: ‘I’m always here! I’m ready to go! I’m born ready, manager!’”