Kirsten Farage spoke to the press once. At a UKIP victory party in Westminster in May 2014, a Daily Telegraph journalist found her standing at the door of an upmarket hotel and she answered questions for what is believed to be the only newspaper interview of her life. She talked about her husband’s drinking, his loathing of camping, and his inability to operate a computer. Then she went back to her private life, and has not spoken to the press since.
Born Kirsten Mehr in Hamburg, Germany in April 1967, she is 58 years old as of March 2026. Nearly every profile published about her places her in the family home in Downe, Kent. UK Companies House records show she moved to Oxted, Surrey in mid-2017, a correction almost no published article about her has made.
She was a Frankfurt-based bond broker before she became a politician’s wife. She managed a senior MEP’s diary and correspondence for years. She took a national newspaper to the High Court and won damages. When the marriage ended, she rebuilt her life in Surrey without granting a single interview.
Table of Contents
| Full Name | Kirsten Mehr (married name: Farage) |
| Date of Birth | April 1967 |
| Age (March 2026) | 58 |
| Birthplace | Hamburg, Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Married | Nigel Farage, 1999 |
| Children with Nigel | Victoria (b. ~2000), Isabelle (b. ~2005) |
| Current Location | Oxted, Surrey, England |
| Marital Status | Separated — not officially divorced |
A Career in Finance, Before the Politics
Kirsten Mehr built her professional life in Germany. She worked as a government bond broker for a German bank and also as an interpreter, giving her working fluency in English alongside German. Both skills placed her firmly in Frankfurt’s financial sector, where she was based when she first met Nigel Farage in 1996.
The meeting was professional in origin, not political. She was working in finance. He was a UKIP co-founder and European Parliament candidate. They began a relationship, and three years later they were married.
The 1999 Marriage and the Family
By the late 1990s, Nigel Farage had left the Conservative Party, co-founded UKIP, and was gaining real traction as a Eurosceptic voice in Brussels. His first marriage, to Irish nurse Gráinne Hayes, ended in divorce in 1997. He and Kirsten had been together since 1996, and they married in 1999.
She became his second wife and stepmother to his two sons from his first marriage, Samuel and Thomas. Together, Kirsten and Nigel had two daughters:
- Victoria Farage, born around 2000
- Isabelle Farage, born around 2005
Both daughters were raised bilingual in English and German. In an April 2018 interview, Nigel confirmed they speak “perfect German” and hold dual British and German passports. He had often cited his German wife in response to accusations that he was anti-European, while arguing his position was against the EU as an institution, not Europe itself.
Parliamentary Secretary: The Salary, the Rule He Set, and the Rule He Broke
After the marriage, Kirsten took on a formal role as Nigel’s parliamentary secretary during his years as a Member of the European Parliament, paid £27,000 per year from his parliamentary allowances.
His explanation for the hire was blunt. In April 2014, he told journalists that “nobody else could do that job.” The reason, as Kirsten herself described it, was technology. Nigel Farage, the man who spent years confronting the European Parliament, could barely use a phone. She described him as having “a steam-powered telephone” that he could only use for texts. She handled everything else: emails, scheduling, documents, often from home well into the night.
“I sit at my computer in my nightie and am very dutiful.” — Kirsten Farage, The Daily Telegraph, May 2014
The arrangement ran through a European Parliament rule that allowed MEPs to employ family members from their allowances. The rule was used so rarely by MEPs outside the UK that it became known informally as the “clause anglaise.” There is also this: at the very first meeting of new UKIP MEPs in 2004, Farage reportedly set the ground rules himself, telling colleagues that “UKIP MEPs will not employ wives.” Within that same year, it emerged he had already hired Kirsten without telling anyone.
When BBC political editor Nick Robinson confronted Farage on air, pointing out he was giving a British job to a German national, Farage said no one else could do the work. Hundreds of unemployed Britons mailed their CVs to UKIP’s office. EU regulations eventually banned MEPs from employing family members, ending the arrangement.
Her One Interview: What Kirsten Farage Actually Said in 2014
On the night UKIP swept the 2014 European Parliament elections, Kirsten was at the victory party in Westminster. A Daily Telegraph journalist was at the door. What followed is the fullest public account of what life with Nigel Farage actually looked like.
On his health, with a mix of concern and dry observation: “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.”
On accusations that Nigel was racist: “If he was a racist, I wouldn’t be with him.”
On what political life had cost the family: “We used to go on holiday to Cornwall, and we can’t do that anymore. We can’t even have a meal or a drink in public.”
She said the children had “suffered a lot” because of his schedule. She took the girls on caravan holidays to France and Italy. Nigel, she noted, does not go camping.
It was the only time she spoke at length to any journalist. She has not done so since.
Annabelle Fuller, a Hospital Ward in 2010, and the Daily Mail Legal Case
The Fuller controversy ran as a thread through Kirsten Farage’s public life for years, though its origins stretched back long before most of the reporting.
In May 2010, Nigel Farage survived a near-fatal plane crash in Northamptonshire. The aircraft, towing a UKIP election banner, nosedived into a field on election morning. He was hospitalised at Horton Hospital in Oxford with broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a fractured sternum. Three women made their way to the hospital that day: Kirsten, UKIP press aide Annabelle Fuller, and French politician Laure Ferrari. Fuller later said she was stopped at the entrance before she could get inside.
In March 2014, former UKIP MEP Nikki Sinclaire raised the matter formally on the floor of the European Parliament, accusing Farage of paying both his wife and his “former mistress” Annabelle Fuller from his parliamentary allowances. Farage responded: “I don’t want to answer that at all, thank you.” Fuller and Farage both denied the affair. Kirsten called the claims “outrageous.”
That same month, the Daily Mail published articles falsely stating that Kirsten had begun her relationship with Nigel while he was still married to Gráinne Hayes. Kirsten filed a High Court claim against Associated Newspapers. By May 2014, the paper had published a page two apology confirming the claims were wrong, clarifying that the two had met only after his first marriage ended, and agreeing to pay Kirsten damages and legal costs. The settlement figure was not disclosed.
At a post-election drinks event in May 2014, Fuller was reportedly removed from the venue at Kirsten’s instruction. Fuller told reporters she was told security would drag her out and she was escorted out in front of colleagues she had worked alongside for years.
In November 2017, Fuller publicly reversed her earlier denials, claiming she had been in a relationship with Farage for twelve years, from 2004 until 2016, and that it had driven her into depression and self-harm. Farage declined to confirm or deny it.
The 2017 Separation: Her Statement, Word for Word
On 6 February 2017, Kirsten issued a statement through the Press Association. It was short, composed, and unambiguous.
“My husband and I have lived separate lives for some years and he moved out of the family home a while ago. This is a situation that suits everyone and is not news to any of the people involved.”
She also asked journalists not to gather outside her home, calling it “extremely distressing, especially for my children.”
The statement came after the Mail on Sunday reported that Laure Ferrari, who ran the Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe, had been staying at Farage’s house in Chelsea. Farage described it as a working arrangement, saying she had nowhere else to stay for a week. Later that year, the two were photographed dancing together at a party marking the first anniversary of the Brexit vote. By late 2023, Farage’s team confirmed Ferrari as his partner. She flew to Australia to meet him as he exited the I’m A Celebrity jungle. In 2025, Ferrari was photographed alongside Farage at his 60th birthday party and at the Reform UK party conference in Birmingham.
Where Kirsten Farage Is in 2026
UK Companies House records confirm that Kirsten Farage was appointed Director of Rockfield Mount Management Company Limited on 29 June 2017, four months after her separation statement. The company’s registered address is Rockfield Mount, Rockfield Road, Oxted, Surrey. Her correspondence address on the register is 5 Rockfield Mount. Her nationality is listed as German. Her country of residence is England.
Rockfield Mount Management Company is a residents’ property management company, a standard UK structure in which homeowners collectively manage their own private development. Her directorship confirms she owns a property there and has been resident in Oxted since mid-2017.
As of March 2026:
- Nigel Farage is leader of Reform UK, the MP for Clacton, and lives in Single Street, a hamlet in the London Borough of Bromley, described as being close to his mother’s home.
- Laure Ferrari is his confirmed partner. She is the legal owner of a property in Clacton valued at approximately £885,000, which Farage initially described as his own before later clarifying it was purchased with Ferrari’s money.
- Kirsten Farage lives in Oxted, Surrey, with no public-facing role, no social media presence, and no statements on record since 2017.
- Kirsten and Nigel remain legally married with no confirmed divorce proceedings.
Their daughters, Victoria and Isabelle, hold dual British and German citizenship and were raised speaking both languages.
The woman Nigel Farage married in 1999 sued a national newspaper, won, and said nothing about it publicly. She raised two bilingual daughters, moved to Surrey, and has given no interviews in over a decade. For someone at the centre of one of Britain’s most scrutinised political marriages, Kirsten Mehr built a private life so thoroughly that most websites still can’t correctly name the county she lives in.
