I’M A Celeb’s Grace Dent made sick “jokes” about co-star Nigel Farage’s near-fatal plane crash.
As the pair face off in tomorrow night’s show, a source close to the politician called her tweets “crass”.
The Masterchef food critic, 50, cracked jokes about the then-Ukip leader within hours of him being plucked from the wreckage.
She tweeted: “I hope none of the people who saved Nigel Farage’s life today were pesky immigrants.”
Grace, who also writes for The Guardian, added of the EU Parliament-hating former MEP: “Ukip claim Nigel Farage crash brought about by nonsensical European laws of gravity.”
Grace claimed she hoped to make “lifelong friends” in the jungle ahead of the series opener on ITV.
However Farage, 59, is likely to be less than impressed with her reaction to his 2010 crash.
A source close to the politician said yesterday: “Nigel is the first one to take the mick out of himself.
“But the truth is that he very nearly died in that crash. He is lucky to be alive. Any joke about the plane crash is crass and poor taste.
“No one who saw them will forget the pictures of him being pulled from the wreckage.
“Nigel is always up for a debate — especially with those who may not like him — but citing the crash is a step too far.”
A spokesman for Farage declined to comment. We approached Grace for comment.
Farage feared burning to death when the two-seater aircraft smashed into a field in Brackley, Northants, on the day of the 2010 General Election.
A Ukip banner had got tangled up around the tail, causing it to plummet, and Farage “spent the next five minutes waiting to crash”.
He said things then got even scarier after it hit the ground at around 80mph.
He recalled: “I could feel petrol in my hair and I was trapped in this thing and I was talking to the pilot. We were saying to each other, ‘Are you OK? Are you OK?’
“He was panicking more than me because of the petrol and just this awful feeling that we had survived the impact but were we going to burn to death? And yeah — that is pretty scary.”
Farage later underwent major spinal surgery after fracturing his sternum, ribs and two vertebrae.
The pilot Justin Adams was airlifted to hospital and later suffered with depression.
He was found dead at his home in Eastbourne, East Sussex, in 2013 aged 48.
Farage’s mum Barbara Stevens said in 2019 her son prayed for a quick death as the plane hurtled towards the ground.
She told Piers Morgan’s Life Stories: “His character got him through it but he still suffers today from that plane crash. Wasn’t he lucky to get out of that alive?”
Grace also blasted Farage in a newspaper column in 2014, branding him “an oaf, dinosaur and patriarchal bully”.
But she told The Sun on Sunday shortly before entering the jungle that she does not fear encountering people she has attacked.
She said: “Anything I’ve ever said over the years is always just full of humour and silliness.
“I am a massive television fan. I’m a massive reality television fan. So, anything I’ve ever said has been in really, really good spirits, hopefully.”
Grace, left, said she comes from a “very normal” family, adding: “I like people from all backgrounds.
“Anybody that reminds me of the people I grew up with, and the people I go home and see at Christmas, will be fantastic.”
