While Katie Price has stated her husband is missing, a close associate has refuted this claim, maintaining he is instead devising an escape strategy from the "hole" he has created for himself over recent weeks. Former glamour model Katie, 47, recently disclosed her worries after allegedly witnessing her man being restrained in a FaceTime video. Lee Andrews has since failed to make contact, and the Foreign Office has confirmed that it is "supporting the family of a British man and are in contact with the local authorities". However, an associate of Katie has suggested that any reports of him being arrested or abducted are inaccurate. Instead, they maintain he has been "hiding out in a rented villa in Dubai".

The Sun reports: "Lee has NOT been kidnapped; he is simply in hiding after also ghosting his devastated wife for the past six days. He is not dead. He is not in jail. And he has not been detained.

"Instead, he is squatting in a slightly run-down villa, frantically planning a route out of this ginormous hole he appears to have buried himself in, and is understood to be liaising with his few trusted contacts on a 'burner phone'."

It has also been suggested that, in addition to being unable to depart Dubai, Lee is now wanted by Interpol after Herts police escalated an investigation involving allegations from one of his former partners.

Katie claims to have last been in contact with her husband on Wednesday. In a statement released on Sunday, Katie insisted that Lee had not simply stepped away from social media - and that she feared he had been abducted, having been 'missing' for three days.

"I put that up because the truth is, Lee has been missing for three days. The last time I heard from Lee was Wednesday night at 10pm, he was trying to go through the border in Dubai to get on a flight to me," she claimed.

"Lee was trying to get through the border at Hatta. This is so discombobulating. His location went off at 10.03pm on Wednesday night. That's the last contact anyone has had – his family and me. This is the third day now."

She subsequently disclosed that during their final FaceTime call, his hands were bound and a hood had been pulled over his head. Katie revealed he told her, "They're coming back for me."

In a post shared on Monday, Katie admitted that the week had been amongst the most gruelling of her life, and that she had never felt so "anxious" and "overwhelmed".