Farage’s claim he paid for £1.4 million house with I’m A Celeb fee ‘not consistent’ with his accounts
The Reform leader is under scrutiny as his claim doesn’t stack up
Nigel Farage’s claim about how he paid for a £1.4 million house in Surrey is “not consistent” with his financial accounts.
Reform UK told the BBC last week that Farage purchased the four-bedroom detached property in Surrey in May 2024 using his fee from appearing on ‘I’m a Celebrity.. Get Me Out of Here’, and not with millions gifted to him by a crypto billionaire.
However, analysis of accounts for his personal media company, Thorn in the Side Ltd, by the Financial Times, suggests that the money from Farage’s reality TV appearance was not used to buy the house.
The seven figure reality TV show pay-out appears to remain on the company’s balance sheet, which rose from £300,000 in May 2023 to £1.7 million a year later, and then to £2 million in 2025.
Nimesh Shah, a tax expert at Blick Rothenburg who analysed the accounts for the FT, said the claim that the house was purchased using the TV fee “needs to be clarified because the company’s accounts are not consistent with their statement”.
In addition, land registry records seen by the Mirror show that Farage, rather than his company, bought the property with cash.
The Reform leader purchased the property shortly after receiving a £5 million gift from Thailand-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.
Farage is currently being investigated by the parliamentary standards commissioner over his failure to declare the gift. He initially claimed Harborne donated the money to fund his security team, but has since said it was a “reward” for campaigning for Brexit.
This isn’t the only first time there have been questions around how Farage paid for a property.
He also claimed last year that he bought a house in his constituency, in Clacton-on-Sea.
However, the Guardian later revealed that the property was in his partner, Laure Ferrari’s name, and that she had bought the £885,000 house in cash.
Farage suggested that Ferrari had been able to buy the four-bedroom home with a pool in Frinton-on-Sea because she has “a very wealthy French family and can afford it”.
A BBC investigation indicated that the size of her family’s alleged wealth would not be large enough to buy the house outright.
In a recent interview with Le Monde, Ferrari refused to say how she had funded the purchase.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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