UKIP leader Nigel Farage was left stammering his excuses yesterday after a photo emerged on social media of him sharing a drink and a chuckle with shamed Chelsea fan Josh Parsons.

The grinning former City slicker was snapped gripping a beer alongside 21-year-old Josh Parsons, who was caught on video standing with the mob which chanted racist songs as they took the Metro to a Chelsea game in Paris on Tuesday night.

Mr Parsons, himself a privately educated City worker, posted the picture on his Instagram account around three months ago with the caption: “UKIP BOYS! What a geezer.”

Mr Farage took to Twitter yesterday to distance himself from yet another former pal-turned-embarrassment.

“Unlike other party leaders I go out and often take pics with the British public,” he wrote.

“Obv not everyone is perfect. I don’t vet people outside pubs.”

Hope Not Hate’s spokesman Simon Cressy told the Star: “It just shows the kind of people who flock round Nigel Farage and his party.

“They’ll try to explain it away like they do with everything else but it’s a reflection on him and their party.”

Mr Parsons is a former pupil at the £30,000-a-year Millfield public school and is now an assistant at the Business and Commercial Finance Club in Mayfair.

He was filmed at the front of a gang of men on a Paris Metro train who pushed a 33-year-old black man, named only as Souleymane S, to stop him boarding.

They can be heard chanting: “We’re racist and that’s the way we like it” and “where were you in World War II?” in footage filmed by disgusted onlookers.

There is no evidence at present that Mr Parsons was involved in the pushing or the chanting.

Souleymane S said yesterday he was “not really surprised” by the attack, adding: “I live with racism.”

But calling on British cops to bring his attackers to justice, he said: “These people, these English fans, must be found and punished.”

Scotland Yard detectives are examining the footage and Chelsea FC has vowed to support any criminal prosecutions.