Nigel Farage: Why Hollywood is interested in TV series about me

Nigel Farage has said his friendship with Donald Trump is probably why a Hollywood studio is interested in making a TV series about Brexit.

An unnamed studio is reported to be in talks to adapt The Bad Boys of Brexit - former UKIP donor Arron Banks's account of Mr Farage's Brexit campaign.

Mr Farage said he was not directly involved in the project.

But talks were due to take place between the studio and Mr Banks next month in Los Angeles.

According to the Sunday Times, Benedict Cumberbatch is being tipped to play Mr Farage, although the former UKIP leader joked: "I have to play myself, obviously."

He suggested the project, which is reported to be a six-part TV adaptation, would be unlikely to get off the ground if it was "just about Brexit" but interest had been generated because it was "linked directly to Mr Trump's presidency itself".

Mr Farage appeared alongside Mr Trump on the campaign trail last year, when the Republican candidate said he hoped to emulate Brexit by upsetting the political establishment.

Mr Farage, who has ruled out a fourth bid for the leadership of his party, is a frequent visitor to the US, where he works as a contributor to Fox News.

"As an idea it [Brexit] has taken America by storm," Mr Farage told BBC News, adding that he was often "accosted in the street" by Americans who wanted to discuss it with him.

He has dined with the president at his Trump hotel in Washington DC and was the first British politician to meet him after he assumed office.

The Bad Boys of Brexit: Tales of Mischief Mayhem and Guerrilla Warfare in the EU referendum campaign is described by publisher Biteback as a tale that lurches "from comedy to crisis (often several times a day)".

Biteback boss Iain Dale told the Daily Mail there was a "real appetite for this kind of thing" in America, with the success of shows such as House of Cards.

He said the Brexit script had been written from the point of Gerry Gunster, an American pollster who was drafted in to advise Mr Banks's Leave.EU campaign.

Andy Wigmore, a close associate of Mr Banks, has said they were approached about a possible adaptation of the book just before Christmas, when they were visiting Mr Trump in New York, and initially thought it was a "joke" but it was "very serious".