Nigel Farage’s wacky race through life took another madcap twist this weekend, with a Sunday newspaper hinting that the Dick Dastardly of British politics has his hands on a Ferrari.

For anyone who assumed Nigel is embedded in the Oval Office, helping that cuddly Steve Bannon keep the Trump presidency on its reassuringly even keel, the truth is more prosaic and more entertaining.

Nige isn’t elegantly perched on the Donald’s right hand after all. Not yet, anyway, though the call may come. It seems unlikely that this administration won’t be short of vacancies. Once Trump has exhausted the phone directories of the entire eastern seaboard, it’s even money that Nigel will be asked to serve at the pleasure of the President.

For now, however, the multiply former and doubtless future leader of Ukip is living in Chelsea, some 3000 miles from DC and a mere 22 miles from his marital home in Kent. While he has chosen to style this borrowed residence as a “bachelor pad”, he is not living there alone.

'He's lying to you' - Nigel Farage heckled in European Parliament

The Mail on Sunday faithfully reports that Nigel, 52, is sharing the property, a £4m Georgian house owned by an unnamed businessman, with a certain Laure Ferrari. Far from being a scion of the Italian luxury car firm, she is a French national who was born in Alsace 37 years ago.

Mlle Ferrari, who has led a far right French party called Arise the Republic, heads a Eurosceptic grouping called the Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe. She is also director of an associated think tank, the extremely differently named Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe. In a classic instance of Jungian synchronicity, the ADDE is under an Electoral Commission investigation for funnelling about £400,000 to Ukip for domestic campaigns.

Nigel not only denies any infringement of electoral funding law. He insists his relationship with Laure is wholly platonic, and that suggesting otherwise is “crackers” – a pithier version of what another notable Brexiteer called “an inverted pyramid of piffle” in vaguely similar circs. He is simply putting up a friend in need of lodgings, he says, as any gallant Englishman would.

Laura, whom he met in 2002 when she waited on him in a Brussels restaurant, and whom he took to a Trump inauguration bash in Washington, comes tantalisingly close to being equally categorical.

“You are putting two and two together,” she tells the paper, “but it is not as simple as that. I am not pleased to be in this situation, and I am sorry it is bringing awful things on Nigel’s life and on my life.” As blanket denials go, this lacks the crystal clarity of “crackers”. Meanwhile, the newspaper adduces the fact that in 2013 Mlle Ferrari retweeted the headline “Why do more women want to bed Nigel Farage than David Cameron?” to press home its insinuation.

Why innocently having or being a house guest would bring awful things on anyone is one of various mysteries. Another, of course, is the status of Kristen Farage, Nigel’s German wife.

Over the years, Kirsten has joined an elite group of fictional spouses – Captain Mainwaring’s Elizabeth, Dr Niles Crane’s Maris, Arthur Daley’s “’Er Indoors” – whose legendary status rests on never being seen or heard. Lavishly eyebrowed Soviet consorts like the late Mrs Brezhnev had a far higher public profile.

Nigel Farage's most controversial moments Show all 12 1 /12 Nigel Farage's most controversial moments Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he unveiled that 'breaking point' poster during the referendum Mr Farage was accused of deploying “Nazi-style propaganda” when he unveiled a poster showing Syrian refugees travelling to Europe under the next “Breaking point”. Users on social media were quick to compare the advert to a Nazi propaganda film with similar visuals and featuring Jewish refugees. The poster was particularly controversial because it was unveiled the morning of the killing of Labour MP Jo Cox Rex Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said he’d be concerned if his neighbours were Romanian In May 2014 Mr Farage was accused of a “racial slur” against Romanians after he suggested he would be concerned living next to a house of them. “I was asked if a group of Romanian men moved in next to you, would you be concerned? And if you lived in London, I think you would be,” he told LBC radio during an interview. Asked whether he would also object to living next to German children, he said: “You know the difference” Bongarts/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the EU campaign was won 'without a bullet being fired' Nigel Farage has said the next Prime Minister has to be a Leave supporter AFP/Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he resigned as Ukip leader and came back days later After failing to win the seat of South Thanet at the general election, Nigel Farage stepped down as Ukip leader – as he had promised to do during the campaign. Days later on 11 May he “un-resigned” and said he would stay after being convinced by supporters within the party. We’ll see how long his resignation lasts this time AP/Matt Dunham Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he blamed immigrants for making him late Mr Farage turned up late to a £25-a-head ‘meet the leader’ style event in Port Talbot, Wales in December 2014. Asked why he was late, he blamed immigrants. “It took me six hours and 15 minutes to get here - it should have taken three-and-a-half to four,” he said. “That has nothing to do with professionalism, what it does have to do with is a country in which the population is going through the roof chiefly because of open-door immigration and the fact that the M4 is not as navigable as it used to be” Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he wanted to ban immigrants with HIV from Britain Mr Farage has used his platform as Ukip leader call for people with HIV to be banned from coming to Britain. Asked in an interview with Newsweek Europe in October 2014 who he thought should be allowed to come to the UK, he said: “People who do not have HIV, to be frank. That’s a good start. And people with a skill.” He also repeated similar comments in the 2015 general election leadership debates Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he defended the use of a racial slur against Chinese people Defending one of Ukip’s candidates, who used the word “ch**ky” to describe a Chinese person, Mr Farage said: “If you and your mates were going out for a Chinese, what do you say you're going for?" When he was told by the presented that he “honestly would not” use the slur, Mr Farage replied: “A lot would” Lintao Zhang/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said parts of Britain were ‘like a foreign land’ The Ukip leader used his 2014 conference speech to declare parts of Britain as being “like a foreign land”. He told his audience in Torquay that parts of the country were “unrecognisable” because of the number of foreigners there. Mr Farage has also previously said he felt uncomfortable when people spoke other language on a train Screengrab Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the British army should be deployed to France At the height of trouble at Britain’s Calais border Mr Farage proposed a novel solution. The Ukip leader called for the British army to be sent to France to put down a migrant rebellion. “In all civil emergencies like this we have an army, we have a bit of a Territorial Army as well and we have a very, very overburdened police force and border agency,” he said. “If in a crisis to make sure we’ve actually got the manpower to check lorries coming in, to stop people illegally coming to Britain, if in those circumstances we can use the army or other forces then why not” AFP/Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said breastfeeding women should ‘sit in the corner’ Mr Farage sparked protests from mothers after he told women to “sit on the corner” if they wanted to breastfeed their children. “I think that given that some people feel very embarrassed by it, it isn’t too difficult to breastfeed a baby in a way that's not openly ostentatious,” Mr Farage said. He added: "Or perhaps sit in the corner, or whatever it might be” AFP/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the gender pay gap exists because women are ‘worth less’ At a Q&A on the European Union in January 2014 Mr Farage said there was no discrimination against women causing the gender pay gap. Instead, he said, women were paid less because they were simply “worth far less” than many of their male counterparts. “A woman who has a client base, has a child and takes two or three years off - she is worth far less to her employer when she comes back than when she went away because that client base won't be stuck as rigidly to her portfolio,” he said Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said he actually couldn’t guarantee £350m to the NHS after Brexit During the EU referendum campaign the Leave side pledged to spend £350 million a week on the National Health Service – claiming that this is what the UK sends to Brussels. Nigel Farage didn’t speak out against this figure and also pledged to spend EU cash on the health service and other public services himself. Then the day of the election result he suddenly changed his tone, saying he couldn’t guarantee the cash for the NHS and that to pledge to do so was “a mistake” Getty

Frau Farage’s immaculately dignified disdain for commenting on her husband’s endeavours has yet to rub off on Katie Price. After difficult encounter with Nigel last week on ITV’s ‘Loose Women’, when naive viewers thought her “out of her depth” on geopolitical issues, Katie counterstruck – never underestimate the Pricey! – with a sortie into the arena of the psycho-sexual therapist. “From what I’ve heard and sensed about him up close,” she posits, “I think the problem with Nige is that his German wife has put up very firm borders around her knickers, and all that sexual frustration has turned him into a racist bigot and a bully.”

Well, it’s certainly a theory, if not a particularly original one. Claims of sexual inadequacy and/ or genital deficiencies have always been used as propaganda against enemies. The CIA spread it about that Saddam Hussein had a tiny penis, and you need no reminding of the ditty about Hitler’s gonadic shortfall, the other allegedly stored (for reasons never explained) in the Albert Hall.

If and when Katie and Nigel debate the genesis of his Euroscepticism at the Oxford Union, and surely it has to be when, she’ll probably cite Nigel’s loss of a testicle to cancer as the source of his muscular distaste for allowing foreign bodies into the national bloodstream.

Until then, we are free to speculate as pruriently as we wish – it’s only odious European countries like Mlle Ferrari’s native France which legally protect public figures’ privacy – about the private life of a man who has infinitely more cause than David Beckham to resent being denied an honour.