Paul Nuttall denies playing Bungle the Bear, but is Nigel Farage Zippy?

The Ukip leader bears an uncanny resemblance to the Rainbow puppet

Paul Nuttall has denied claims that he once played Bungle the Bear, but we couldn’t help but notice that Nigel Farage looks suspiciously like Zippy.

For those unfamiliar, Zippy is a brownish-orange puppet with a strangely distinctive head and unusually wide smile. He shot to fame in children’s Seventies and Eighties television show Rainbow and is characterised by his desire to always be the centre of attention and his self-righteous nature.

His frequently loud behaviour and silly voice often land him into all sorts of trouble and he is sometimes silenced by other characters in the show, by zipping up his oversized mouth.

Nigel Farage is the Ukip party leader, identifiable by his gregarious, outspoken persona and belief that his ideals are consistently correct. He too is known for his unnervingly wide smile, but unlike Zippy his demands and unwanted views cannot be hushed through a zipping of the mouth.

Ukip’s deputy leader Paul Nuttall was forced to deny he once played Bungle the Bear, also from Rainbow, after internet pranksters edited his Wikipedia page, which was amended to say: "Nuttall was the original Bungle in children’s television show Rainbow."

Nuttall told The Mirror that the Bungle joke is "probably the funniest thing I’ve ever read about myself on the internet. I’m all for it."

"Considering I wasn’t even born when Rainbow started, it makes it very difficult indeed for this to be true," he said.

"But I do find it really funny that people are making things like this up."