Who is Nigel Farage’s French politician girlfriend Laure Ferrari?
Nigel Farage has ended his stint on I’m A Celebrity – and was met by girlfriend Laure Ferrari.
He made it to the final and finished in third place – with reality TV personality Sam Thompson being crowned King of the Jungle, and ex-professional boxer Tony Bellew coming second.
Ferrari was part of the friends and family group flown out to Australia to support contestants.
Who is Laure Ferrari?
Born in the French town of Epinal in 1979, Laure Ferrari studied English at the University of Strasbourg and was waitressing in the city when she met Nigel Farage.
The former UKIP and Brexit Party leader was a member of the European Parliament (MEP) at the time and the pair got into a conversation.
She credited this meeting with sparking her desire to enter politics.
That was in 2007, when she was 28. Now 44, she is 15 years his junior.
How long have the pair been romantically linked?
Ms Ferrari and Mr Farage have been linked since 2017, when reports emerged they were sharing a home.
At the time, Mr Farage told The Mail On Sunday that Ms Ferrari was someone he had “known well for a long time” and he was helping her out because she needed somewhere to stay for a week.
It was a “working relationship”, he said – refusing to answer questions about whether they had been intimate.
Ms Ferrari told the newspaper: “I have no trustworthy friends in London who could have hosted me.
“I asked and he accepted. He is just trying to be helpful.”
The same year, the pair were pictured dancing together at a Brexit anniversary party.
Political career
Ms Ferrari got her break in politics thanks to Mr Farage, who secured her a job at the European Parliament.
She first worked as a parliamentary assistant before becoming head of public relations for the British delegation to the Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group, EFD, which was co-chaired by Mr Farage.
In 2014, she ran for far-right French party Arise the Republic (Debout la Republique) at the European Parliament elections.
The following year, she was appointed head of the Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe (IDDE), a eurosceptic thinktank.
The IDDE and the Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe (ADDE), the political party it is affiliated to, were accused of misspending taxpayers’ money.
An audit by the European Parliament found the ADDE and IDDE used more than £400,000 of EU grant funding for the benefit of UKIP, in breach of its rules.
A long-time eurosceptic
In a 2014 interview, she told EURACTIV France she had no interest in politics until the 2005 French referendum on ratifying the proposed Constitution of the European Union.
Ms Ferrari said: “I said to myself – the EU is going behind the backs of European citizens here. I was always a bit of a rebel.
“What I find repelling about the European Union is that it imposes a vision that does not correspond to that of the European citizens.”
In the same interview, she distanced herself from far-right party the National Front, saying she had taken part in protests against the party when she was younger.
“Some of their ideas, like those regarding the death penalty and immigration, disgust me,” she said.