A British man suspected of being the first UK citizen to die of Ebola may have have told doctors he had caught the disease as a joke, according to a friend.

Colin Jaffray, 58, from Royston, Cambridgeshire, was struck down with a fever, vomiting and internal bleeding during a business trip to Macedonia - and died in hospital yesterday evening.

Dr Jovanka Kostovska, Macedonia's head of infection control, said the married father of three had 'all the symptoms of Ebola' - but Mike English, who was travelling with Mr Jaffray, is not convinced.

Pictured: This man has been named locally as Colin Jaffray, a Briton who has died in Macedonia with 'all the symptoms' of Ebola

The 62-year-old - one of 27 guests are currently being quarantined in the £39-a-night Skopje hotel - said he believes tests for the killer disease will come back negative, the Mirror reports.

He said: 'Colin had a very English sense of humour. My theory is that he joked, "Oh, it’s Ebola" and they took it seriously.'

Macedonian authorities are also investigating the possibility that he died after a drinking binge.

Yesterday, Mr English claimed that businessman Mr Jaffray was 'shaking' and 'confused' in the hours before his death but had refused to see a doctor.

He said: 'For two days he was saying he didn't feel good. He had fever but refused to go to the doctor.

'That morning he said he felt better. We agreed to meet downstairs at the hotel at noon. He called and said he didn't feel good, his hands were shaking. He was confused. The hotel staff then called for an ambulance'.

The 58-year-old Briton had stayed in his hotel room for three days with severe stomach ache but was rushed to hospital yesterday afternoon but died within 90 minutes.

Medical staff in protective suits arrive at the Hotel Super 8, Skopje, Macedonia where Colin Jaffray was staying for three days before his death from suspected Ebola

Locked up: Quarantined people look from the window of the sealed-off hotel in Skopje where the unnamed British man was staying

First case: Macedonian police guard the entrance of the quarantined hotel in Skopje as doctors in protective suits leave carrying evidence

Dr Kostovska said yesterday: ‘These are all symptoms of ebola, which raises suspicions with this patient.

She added: 'We got information from several places that the patient frequently and in large quantities consumed alcohol, which can give a similar clinical picture and other diseases'.

'There is a small probability he had Ebola, but we have to wait for the full results,' which are due today or tomorrow'.

Speaking from his hotel room Mr English, 72, who is not unwell, denied his friend had an alcohol problem.

'The suggestion that he was an alcoholic was certainly not true. He did not drink more than anyone else,' he said.

He said that Mr Jaffray was a married father of three from Cambridge, and said that he had visited Africa six years ago.

Mandarin: Jovanka Kostovska, left, of the Macedonian Health Ministry, said the Briton had 'all the symptoms of Ebola' but said there were also reports of excessive drinking

He said it was 'crazy' to think he had Ebola, which has killed thousands in West Africa and has spread to North America and Europe.

This raises the terrifying prospect that if it is Ebola he contracted it in the UK

Mr English's wife Olga told MailOnline at their home in Bedfordshire Mr Jaffray was 'healthy and jokey' the night before he left the country nine days ago.

She said: 'I don't know what kind of bug Colin got but it's not ebola, I'm sure of that.'

She added that Mr Jaffray had suffered an 'illness related to the nervous system' for years and had always 'refused to go to his GP'.

She claimed he would often shake and had been admitted to hospital in Macedonia a number of times before during business trips to Skopje.

She said: 'Colin doesn't have an alocohol problem. He had a drink every now and then but no more than anybody else.

'He had a long term health problem but he never went to the doctors. Everyone was saying he should have gone to the doctors but he wouldn't listen.

'It wasn't viral, he had it for a long time, a number of years. Everybody knew he had it and evrybody told him to go to the doctors but he never did.

'Every time he went to Macedonia it would be something. He would fall down or it would be something else. It was related to something more serious that's wrong with him that nobody knows about.

'I think that's what has happened not ebola. Its not viral, its something to do with his nervous system like Parkinsons, he shakes a lot.

'They are expecting the test results tomorrow then I don't know when [Mr English] will be home. Hopefully straight away.

'Apparently Colin passed on a meeting because he wasn't feeling very well, Michael went to it by himself then when he came back to the hotel Colin had been taken to hospital.

'Its very sad. He was a really nice man and very intelligent. I think he went to Cambridge University.'

Medical staff monitor passengers' body temperature with a thermal camera at Skopje Airport after British citizen Colin Jaffray died

The authorities believe Mr Jaffray had travelled to Skopje directly from Britain and had not been in any country known to have Ebola outbreaks

Health workers in Skopje, Macedonia, outside the hospital where the British man died of what is believed to be Ebola

She continued: 'The whole hotel is in quarantine, there's about 27 people there.

'He messaged me last night and said he thought Colin had died. He said "I think something is wrong, I think Colin may have passed away".

'The next thing the hostel was being sealed up and he was told he wasn't allowed to leave.

'They had known each other for years and years. They were very close. They knew each other from work and their families were very close.

'I saw something about his death being to do with drinking but I don't know. We all go out for a few drinks when we are on holiday don't we?

'I know it is not ebola. I saw Colin before we left. We had dinner, both families, and he was healthy and joking and everything'.

She said the pair were in Macedonia seeking out investors for their fishing business.

The UK Foreign Office says it is investigating the incident. So far the epidemic, the worst on record since Ebola was discovered in 1976, has claimed 3,800 lives and infected at least 8,000 people.

Public Health England said it believed it was 'unlikely' that the death was caused by the virus but investigations were continuing.

Dr Brian McCloskey, of Public Health England, said: 'Public Health England is aware there are unconfirmed reports of a British national dying in Macedonia, who may have exhibited some symptoms compatible with Ebola.

'We understand Ebola to be unlikely as the cause of death but will continue to work with partners to investigate.'

The unnamed man will be the first British victim of the Ebola outbreak that has killed thousands in West Africa and has spread to North America and Europe, if reports are confirmed

Macedonian TV station Alfa TV reported the patient was admitted to an infection clinic in the city with symptoms of the disease.

When admitted to the hospital, the patient was unable to communicate and passed away shortly after. Tests are underway to find out if he had the disease.

A spokesman from the Macedonian foreign ministry said: 'I can confirm that a British person has died and he is in the state hospital in Skopje.

'We are looking to see what are the reasons according to the protocols of the World Health Organization.

'There was a friend with him and he has also been retained in the hospital and the crew from the ambulance are also retained in the hospital.'

The incubation period for Ebola can be between two and 21 days.

A Health Ministry official said the man had arrived in Skopje from Britain a week ago and had been rushed to hospital at 3pm on Thursday, where he died several hours later.

Dr. Jovanka Kostovska of the ministry's commission for infectious diseases said the man had been suffering from fever, vomiting and internal bleeding, and that his condition deteriorated rapidly.

'These are all symptoms of Ebola, which raises suspicions with this patient,' Kostovska told a news conference, adding that samples had been sent to Germany for tests to confirm the cause of death.

Staff of the hotel where the two Britons stayed have also been quarantined, as have the ambulance team and medical staff that treated the deceased.

A building belonging to French health authorities was cordoned off on the outskirts of Paris on Thursday after a suspected case of Ebola was reported.

Ebola victim Teresa Romero Ramos' condition has deteriorated, hospital officials said today

Doctors wear protective suits inside Carlos III hospital in Madrid, Spain, where nurse Teresa Romero is being treated for the Ebola virus today

Around 60 people were quarantined at Pontoise - but it turned out to be a false alarm.

Local official Jean-Luc Nevache, announced that 'no one has been infected'. The alarm was raised late on Thursday afternoon in an administrative building of the General Council in the northwest suburb after four undocumented Guineans had complained of severe headache.

Today the health of a Spanish nurse with Ebola worsened and four other people were put into isolation in Madrid.

Teresa Romero, 44, is the first person to have contracted Ebola outside of Africa, after becoming infected by a Spanish priest repatriated from Africa with the disease.

In total seven people are in isolation, though only Romero has tested positive for Ebola. The others include the nurse's husband and two doctors who cared for her. Three other people were released from the isolation unit late on Wednesday after testing negative.

British nurse Will Pooley survived after becoming infected with the virus while working to help victims in Sierra Leone.

Grim task: Volunteers in protective suit carry for burial the body of a person who died from Ebola in Waterloo,Sierra Leone. The disease has claimed 3,800 lives and infected at least 8,000 people so far

British Ebola survivor William Pooley, 29, a nurse who contracted the disease in Sierra Leone

Earlier this month the 29-year-old told an international summit the world must avoid 'at all cost' the 'horror and misery' of watching young children die from the disease in horrific, squalid conditions.

Mr Pooley, from Suffolk, returned from a life-saving mission to the U.S. where he gave blood to try and help another victim of the virus, a friend he worked with in Sierra Leone helping victims.

The British government tonight ordered airports to quiz passengers arriving from West Africa in an attempt to prevent Ebola entering the UK, just hours after ministers said it would do little to curb the spread of the deadly virus.

But experts today told MailOnline 'shutting borders will not stop Ebola', as leading experts say the key to tackling the vicious virus is 'rooting it out' at the source, in West Africa.

Dr Ben Neuman, a virologist at the University of Reading, told MailOnline: 'Shutting borders will not stop Ebola, you have to root it out.'

He added: 'The longer this goes on the more likely it is we may see a case in the UK.

'But the UK deals with things like this effectively, they (the authorities) handle it.

'They are ready enough and have the capacity. There are a lot of doctors and nurses here who have been out there (to West Africa) with Doctors Without Borders, and so who have Ebola experience, which is invaluable.'

Meanwhile Professor Robert Dingwall, a specialist in health policy responses to infectious diseases at Nottingham Trent University accused the US of 'gesture politics', by introducing temperature screening at five airports.

He told MailOnline: 'Controls are costly to enforce, inconvenience people and disrupt economic activity while having little or no impact on the spread of infections.'

The British government tonight ordered airports to quiz passengers arriving from West Africa in an attempt to prevent Ebola entering the UK

'We have to work now so that it is not the world's next AIDS,' said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden, pictured

Experts say the most effective method of tackling the outbreak is to direct resources and funds to fighting the disease in West Africa, welcoming news the UK has vowed to deploy 750 soldiers and a medical warship to Sierra Leone.

A U.S. health chief has warned the outbreak could become the 'next Aids', unless drastic action is taken to halt the crisis.

'We have to work now so that it is not the world's next AIDS,' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden told the heads of the United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund gathered in Washington.

'I would say that in the 30 years I've been working in public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS,' he added, warning of a 'long fight' ahead.

Brazil has recorded its first suspected case of Ebola, which if confirmed would mean the disease has spread to South America for the first time.

A 47-year-old from Guinea, one of the African countries most affected by the disease, is in the city of Cascavel, south-west of Sao Paulo,