Nicole Richie is a germaphobe.

Nicole Richie

Nicole Richie

The 38-year-old fashion designer is paranoid about there being illness-inducing dirt in the home she shares with her husband Joel Madden and their two children - 12-year-old daughter Harlow and 10-year-old son Sparrow - and so has it scrubbed from "top to bottom" every day by a team of cleaners.

Nicole also doesn't like to hold hands with musician Joel, 40, until after he has washed his digits first or used sanitiser.

A source told the new issue of National Enquirer magazine: "She has an army of housekeepers who clean their house top to bottom everyday. Joel can't even touch Nicole without her demanding he wash his hands with disinfectant first it's driving him nuts."

Last month, Nicole and Joel took their kids to Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and she was seen wearing a pair of latex gloves to protect herself from germs.

Good Charlotte rocker Joel wore a surgical face mask seemingly to protect himself from the possibility of catching respiratory illness Coronavirus - which is also known as COVID-19.

Nicole has long had a phobia of germs and when she flies on planes she always makes sure she dons a pair of latex gloves and she cleans all the surfaces around her seat with antibacterial wipes.

The former 'Simple Life' star's regime was discovered by her friend Heidi Klum, who thought the habit was "f***ing nuts" when the pair boarded a plane together after Nicole had finished filming an appearance on Heidi's Amazon Prime Video series 'Making The Cut'.

At the time Heidi posted a video to her Instagram account in which the German model can be heard saying: "Okay so I thought that only Naomi Campbell was the nut job, but nein! Mrs. Richie is just as f***ing nuts! What is wrong with you girls?!"

The clip showed Nicole - whose dad is singer Lionel Richie - donning her disposable gloves and getting to work cleaning a table beside her chair, as she explained she likes to scrub the area to ensure other people haven't spread germs.

Tagged in