He was wearing a baggy red shirt. But the sartorial inequality did not stop the leader of the pink tide sweeping Latin America from giving the catwalk deity a big hug.

The meeting of the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and British model Naomi Campbell late on Tuesday takes Hugo Chávez’s courting of the celebrity elites to new highs.

Previous visitors to the Miraflores palace in Caracas have included predictable celebrity activists such as Sean Penn and Danny Glover. But the arrival of Campbell brought an altogether more glamourous tone to the ongoing revolution.

Campbell, known for throwing tantrums at airports, launching telephones at assistants and mopping the floors of New York City’s sanitation department after admitting reckless assault, allied herself with Chávez during a trip she made to Brazil last week.

At an appearance before local business leaders in Sao Paulo she reportedly said: “I hate Bush.” Shortly afterwards, an invitation to Venezuela was secured.

However, if Chávez was expecting a leftist firebrand he will be been disappointed by the model’s comments to reporters on her arrival at the presidential palace. “I’m not here to be political,” she had said, before revealing that this was not her first visit to Venezuela. It was, it emerged, her second.