The tearful revelations by Stefan Petzner that he and his boss, the late rightwing populist Jörg Haider, were lovers has sent Austria into a spin and plunged into disarray a party that three weeks ago celebrated its biggest ever electoral victory.

Petzner, who remains the spokesman of Haider's anti-immigration Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ) but as of yesterday who was sidelined as Haider's successor, has added a new twist to the mystery surrounding the true character of Austria's most controversial post-war politician.

If his party's projection of him is to be believed, he was a family man, a loyal husband, a father to two daughters, a sporty, clean-living, almost teetotal maverick - an image that Haider and his followers wanted to project at all costs to keep their ultra-conservative voters on side. It is an image that might have remained intact and gone with him to the grave had the 58-year-old not died the way he did - speeding while drunk on the night of October 11.

An attempt to reconstruct his final hours has revealed his last port of call before driving off in his VW Phaeton was Klagenfurt's most popular gay bar, Stadtkramer.

The last picture of the governor of Carinthia shows him propping up the bar with an unknown man - in front of them an array of vodka, whiskey and Red Bull bottles.

The details were in themselves not enough to provoke serious consideration of rumours since the early 1990s that Haider was gay or bisexual. What dominated the chat shows was the issue of politicians' drinking habits.

Haider was mourned in grand style, given a state funeral that was broadcast live on television and referred to as "the father of our province". His passing was compared to the end of the world. "The sun has fallen from the sky, our clocks have stopped," Gerhard Dörfler, Haider's successor as the governor of Carinthia, told the 30,000 mourners.

But it was Petzner's choked and repeated disclosure that Haider had been his "lebensmensch" - the man of his life - that got Austrians talking.

"It was love," he told a radio breakfast show. "We had a relationship that went far beyond friendship. Jörg and I were bound by something really special."

Haider, he said, despite his 58 years, had an "inner child". He, Petzner, despite his relative youth, was a "mature soul", according to Haider. The combination, Petzner said, was what "made the relationship so special". He agreed with the interviewer's suggestion that Haider had gone to a better place and was now his "guardian angel".

Then there was the emotional press conference he hosted in which the tears continued to flow.

"I've lost my best friend. He was not only my boss but my partner and together we had wonderful times," he said, describing the attraction to Haider as "magnetic".

The Austrian commentator and video blogger Robert Misik is sensible to ask: "Is all of this politically relevant?"

Certainly, yes. As an MP Haider voted against lowering the age of consent for homosexuals. He represented a brand of ultra-conservative politics that railed against everything that was not traditional or mainstream.

Gay rights groups and Austrian intellectuals rowed for years over whether to out Haidar. One argument in favour was that it would damage him politically. Against it was the fear that it would increase homophobia in an already staunchly conservative country.

Answering his own question, Misik says: "Of course it has a bearing on who Haider the public person was." And it goes some way to help explain his magnetism. "He had a personal charm that clearly had a particular effect on men in their early 20s, who he gathered around him and hoisted into the highest offices at a very young age."

His homoerotic lure was clear. I remember his 50th birthday celebrations up a mountain near Villach. It was a most typical Haider affair. He was surrounded the entire day by an entourage of well-dressed, perma-tanned male supporters who looked like Haider clones. It is they who gave Haider's BZÖ, and before that, his Freedom party (FPÖ), the euphemistic nickname of the "buberl partei" - the party of little boys. It is the undying loyalty of such figures, often referred to as the "briefcase carriers", that helped Haider succeed for so long.

Well known for providing acerbic anti-Haider remarks is the Nobel prizewinning Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek. In a new essay that has just appeared on her website, she goes so far as to compare Haider to a "saviour" with religious powers, referring to his followers as the "lads from the farms with their red faces, browned by artificial sun ... they have now been orphaned".

Egyd Gstättner, one of Carinthia's most famous authors, commentators and Haider critics, has no qualms about calling the outpouring of grief a continuation of the "führer kult" Haider enjoyed in life.

"The BZÖ is more like a fan club that had one führer who determined everything down to the loo paper at party headquarters without anyone objecting to him," he says.

He thinks it is a very Austrian attitude - the "Fritzl phenomenon", Gstättner calls it, referring to the builder who kept his daughter in his cellar as a sex slave for 24 years. "He had such power no one dared question him and simply accepted the way things were."

The one-man party theory is the reason given by many politologists to predict that Haider's BZÖ is unlikely to survive long, despite securing 10% of the nation's vote three weeks ago. "The afterglow will still be felt after a couple of years, but a party cannot survive forever based around a mythical figure," says Richard Brem, editor in chief of the politics and youth culture website screenkids.tv.

It is most likely that the BZÖ, which broke away from the FPÖ, will be subsumed into the original party once more. That scenario is considered even more likely after Petzner's emotional outburst led to him losing his job as BZÖ leader yesterday to a rather uninspiring divorced father of two.

If the BZÖ had thought of its own longevity, says the political analyst Peter Filzmaier, it would have done more to persuade Haider's widow, Claudia, 52, to take the reins. The softly spoken, socially engaged woman, he says, would have been a "leveller" after the "larger-than-life" Haider, and would have maintained the Haider brand and mythology, thus keeping traditional supporters on board. "She would be the only candidate no one could object to," Filzmaier says.

Rightwing websites, meanwhile, are full of conspiracy theories suggesting Haider was murdered. Greek myths have been drawn on - after all, he was driving a Phaeton.

One theory suggests a spurious numerological link between Haider's death and 9/11. Another, from a former Haider disciple, suggests he was murdered by Mossad - which fits neatly into his oft-expressed belief in a Jewish world domination theory and gives further fuel to the party's antisemitic views.

In short, it's hard for many to accept that the Haider myth is mortal. For now, the family has delayed cremating his remains pending further forensic tests as to the cause of death. Whether it wants to or not, Austria is not likely to succeed in burying Jörg Haider any time soon.