Nigel Farage’s wife Kirsten says Ukip leader ‘drinks and smokes far too much… but he’s not a racist’
Mrs Farage discusses her husband’s alleged affairs, family life and racism in her first newspaper interview
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Your support makes all the difference.Nigel Farage’s wife, Kirsten, has denied claims that her husband is racist.
He faced a backlash earlier this month after saying he would be concerned if a group of Romanians moved in next door to him.
Mrs Farage was born in Hamburg, Germany.
“If he was a racist I wouldn’t be with him,” she said.
“I don’t think he has got a nasty bone in his body – he is not a bully, he likes things done properly.
“It hurts him being personally attacked but it doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable because I know he is not a racist.”
Farage met his wife in 1996 during a business trip to Frankfurt while she was working as an interpreter in a German bank. He married her 1999, two years after divorcing his first wife, Grainnes Hayes.
She worries about the politician’s “very hectic lifestyle”.
“He doesn’t get a lot of sleep, he doesn’t get a lot of rest, he lives on adrenaline a lot, he doesn’t eat regular meals, now I am beginning to sound like his mother, and he smokes and he drinks too much,” she told The Telegraph in her first newspaper interview.
“But if you have that sort of lifestyle I think it is what keeps him going, it keeps the adrenaline going.”
Farage has four children, two sons with his first wife and two daughters from his second marriage.
She admits that “the kids have suffered a lot” through their respective jobs, which leave them with little time for holidays.
“There is not much time for a family life – but we watch him on the telly when we want to see him,” she said.
Mrs Farage works as her husband’s taxpayer-funded secretary, a demanding role that requires “unsociable hours”.
The Ukip leader is not confident with computers and has a “steampowered telephone”.
“I sit at my computer in my nightie and am very dutiful,” she said.
She denies claims that her husband allegedly had an affair with former Ukip press officer Annabelle Fuller. The allegations were made by former Ukip MEP Nikki Sinclaire.
“I have heard it before and it always comes from the same sort of people who wouldn’t – even if it would be true, which it isn’t – she wouldn’t possibly know, because she has never been part of that inner circle or worked for Nigel,” said Farage.
“I don’t think they have spoken a word to each other in 10 years.”
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