The glamour model formerly known as Jordan is scouting for a protégée to mould in her image. But surely one Katie Price is more than enough? She talks, with refreshing candour, to Stella magazine.
I first encounter Katie Price in the bowels of the Café de Paris, the once-legendary haunt near Leicester Square in London.
In days gone by it was a rather louche place, a celebrity hangout, somewhere to be seen. Today it is hosting the final of Katie Price’s new television show, Signed by Katie Price, in which the 33-year-old looks for a model to sign to her new agency, Black Sheep.
Over the weeks the contestants have been taking part in Apprentice-style tasks and Price has whittled them down to two finalists.
Today the pair are promoting their own 'celebrity’ perfume. At the end of the day Price and two other judges (television producer Glen Middleham and casting director Bayo Furlong) will decide the winner.
I’d like to say it’s exciting. I’d like to say the tension is high – but it isn’t.
It’s very hot in the basement. Members of the film crew are milling around. Intermingled with them are the former contestants.
The girls, who are heavily made-up, wear clothes the size of bandages. The boys are camper than Julian Clary. Then, just as everyone’s energy has started to lag, Katie Price appears on stage.
They just stare at her. There she is: Katie Price, aka Jordan, in towering heels, a tiny, tight black dress, teeth whiter than a porcelain plate, fake tan, uplifted boobs, cinched-in waist, false eyelashes, make-up caked on her face, and lots and lots of teased hair cascading down her back.
People gasp, clap and cheer.This girl, this not particularly remarkable girl whose biggest assets are – let’s be honest – her boobs and a pretty face, has somehow turned herself into an icon.
Some people think she’s a good thing – a living, breathing emblem of in-yer-face girl power; others think that with her fake-everything and out-of-control love life she has denigrated what it means to be a female.
She’s a businesswoman worth £40 million-plus, a horse-mad country girl who struck gold.
She’s hard-faced, hard-nosed, surrounded by yes-people – yet she’s continually having her heart broken by men. She is also, according to her, a loyal friend, a fiercely supportive mother.
Whatever she is, we all think we know her. 'The Pricey’, as she has taken to calling herself, has somehow become part of our national identity.
A week later I am sitting with The Pricey in a plush hotel in Soho. She looks entirely different from the coiffed version of the week before.
Back then, on stage, putting the contestants through their paces, she seemed as tough as nails – mouthy, defensive, constantly fiddling with her uncomfortable dress, staring at everyone as if challenging them to a duel.
'Why do you want to be famous?’ she asked the contestants in her distinctive voice, Sarf London-meets-Essex.
'Do you know what it is? It’s hell.’ She then rolled her eyes as the audience whooped.
'I just want to be like you,’ the girl contestant said.
'No you don’t!’ The Pricey retorted.
Today she is much more relaxed. She looks about 10 years younger. Her hair is long and straight. She has very little make-up on and is wearing white, ripped jeans, brown boots and a T-shirt, She is – and always was – a very pretty girl.
'D’ya know, when I was at school no one thought I was pretty,’ she says. 'I used to tell everyone I was going to be famous but everyone used to laugh at me.’
But famous she is. She’s a one-woman, money-making machine. Her books, of which there are 45, including her autobiographies, novels and children’s stories, sell by the cartload.
'No one wanted to know when I first suggested I did an autobiography,’ she says. 'I got turned down by everyone but then John Blake said he’d publish me. I made a fortune for him!
'Then he signed Jodie Marsh to do a book. I’m very loyal but how dare he! She was supposed to be a rival of mine!’
Price then jumped ship to Random House and has made the company a fortune.
'Yeah, they are very popular, my books,’ she says. She’s quite happy to give credit to her ghost-writer, Rebecca Farnworth. 'I think of the plot; Rebecca writes them,’ she says.
Her television programmes, of which there have been many, are watched by hundreds of thousands of fans.
We’ve all seen her life, warts and all. How, then, can she complain about media intrusion?
'Yeah, I know,’ she says, 'but that don’t mean those photographers should camp outside my house. I deserve some privacy, don’t I?’
Yet she seems to be hopeless at running her private life. She’s had loads of boyfriends, including the pop singers Gareth Gates and Dane Bowers, all of whom she writes about in her autobiographies.
She’s had two marriages – to the singer Peter Andre, the father of two of her three children – and to Alex Reid, a cage fighter.
She is now going out with Leandro Penna, an Argentine television presenter who speaks very basic English.
She met him at a party in America earlier this year and he now lives with her. He goes everywhere with her. He’s here today – tall, dark, handsome, smiling sweetly at everyone and looking utterly confused.
Price tells me he’s brilliant with her kids. 'He takes them riding. He’s really good at riding. He played polo in Argentina.’ Leandro nods at me and smiles. He must be the ultimate male accessory: a good-looking man you don’t have to talk to.
When I first met her seven years ago Price was just pregnant with Junior, her son with Andre. She was accompanied by her PR, who represented Andre too, and Price was very muted.
'I bet every time I went to say something, they told me not to say it?’
Yes, they did.
'Yeah, well, I’m not with them anymore,’ says Price. CAN Associates and Price severed their relationship when she and Peter Andre broke up.
'It wasn’t great,’ she says of that period, when the world turned against the partying Price, who was in Ibiza getting drunk and misbehaving.
'But really I don’t care what people write about me. I got over that years ago, you know?’
Then she leans towards me. 'How do you think I am now?’ she says in a challenging fashion. She looks at me. 'You answer it. Am I different now?’
'Relaxed?’ I say hopefully. 'You seem more relaxed.’
She sinks back into her seat. 'Good,’ she says. 'Yes, I am more relaxed.’
I sink back into my own seat. Thank goodness for that.
When she first started out, in the 1990s, she was Jordan. 'Jordan was wild,’ says Price, laughing. 'Jordan liked to drink and party and fall out of dresses.’
Jordan slept with men and then told everyone about it. Jordan posed topless, did Playboy and became famous for having her breasts enhanced.
Back in 1994 Katie Price had finished school and didn’t know what to do with herself. 'My uncle’s in the music business and he told me I didn’t have a good enough voice to sing and that I was too short to model.’
She was working as a temp when one day a girl in her office said she was a part-time photographer and she’d like to take some photos of her.
'We went down to Brighton beach and we did some shots and we sent them to Page Three and…’
'They were topless?’ I ask her, shocked.
'Yeah,’ says Price, not turning a hair.
'On a public beach?’
She laughs. 'I’ve never had any problem with that!’ she says.
'I grew up in a very relaxed family. My dad walked around naked all the time. Most of my friends have seen his todger!’
Page Three turned her down but the pictures were spotted by someone at an agency. 'They signed me up and the next thing I knew I was doing Page Three.
'That’s what I want other girls to know: just because people initially turn you down, it don’t mean nothing. You gotta keep trying.’
She used the name Jordan because she didn’t want her family to be embarrassed about what she was doing. 'My mum was working in the City. She didn’t want people to know I was her daughter.’
Her brother’s friends had posters of her on their walls. 'He never even said I was his sister!’ None of this seems to bother her. 'Why would it? We’re a close family.’
I ask her what she thinks has made her so special. After all, there are hundreds of glamour models looking for a break.
'I worked really hard,’ she said. 'I went to every single casting, whether or not I thought I’d get the job. I drove around London every day in my little VW just to get anything that was going.
'Believe me, I really worked for it. I did my homework as well. I bought all those calendars, the Pirelli one and that, and I studied them.’
Yet none of this explains her all-encompassing celebrity status. Some people assume that she is just incredibly single-minded, using everything about herself for publicity.
On the one hand, she’s undeniably a commercial wizard, on the other a disaster.
'Look at my marriage to Alex,’ she says, rolling her eyes. 'I really pick ’em, don’t I?’
Strangely, I end up bumping into Reid a day later and he isn’t impressive. He seems rather annoyingly vain.
That aside, anyone could have told her that bouncing out of a marriage, going through a very public fall-out and then, a nanosecond later, marrying a cross-dressing cage-fighter was not the best thing to do.
'Oh, I dunno,’ she says. She fiddles with her hair. 'I just get caught up in things.’
I think it would be fair to say that The Pricey doesn’t do introspection. Personally, I think she hurls herself from one thing to the next to avoid dealing with any of it.
The only area of her life that she protects from public view is her children. She has Harvey, nine, her son with the footballer Dwight Yorke, and Junior, six, and Princess, four, with Andre.
She kept them very much out of the limelight until the comedian Frankie Boyle made an extremely distasteful joke about Harvey, who is severely disabled, on Channel 4.
Price was incensed. 'I had no apology,’ she says. 'It was horrible and not at all funny. I just thought it was disgusting.’ She decided then to make a documentary about her life with Harvey.
It showed the daily traumas of dealing with a child who is severely autistic and suffers from debilitating illnesses.
'I didn’t do it to get sympathy,’ she says. 'I don’t want sympathy from no one. I did it to try and show people what it’s like to have a disabled child.’
The programme was well received. 'I had a lot of letters from other families,’ she says. 'I hope it helped people. It’s bloody hard work.’
But, as she says, she likes working hard. She says what she’s really interested in now is modelling again.
'You can tell everyone that,’ she says. 'I want to get my kit off. I want to do Playboy, full-on and that.’ Everyone in the room giggles nervously. 'No, I do!’ she says, pretending to be hurt.
And now she’s looking for another 'her’…
'Not another me,’ she corrects me. 'If I was looking for another me, I’d be doing myself out of a job wouldn’t I?’
She says that, in fact, she’s looking for someone quite different. 'I want to launch someone,’ she says, 'but they’ve got to be the right person.
'What I’m giving them is a fast track. I’m telling them all about the business and how to cope with the press’ – she gives me a look – 'but they’ve got to do the rest.’
Just as I am about to leave I ask her what she’d do if she did meet another her. She looks round the room. There is silence.
Then she throws back her head and laughs.
'Another me?’ she says. 'You gotta be joking! There’s no one else like me.’
Source: telegraph.co.uk
The girls, who are heavily made-up, wear clothes the size of bandages. The boys are camper than Julian Clary. Then, just as everyone’s energy has started to lag, Katie Price appears on stage.
They just stare at her. There she is: Katie Price, aka Jordan, in towering heels, a tiny, tight black dress, teeth whiter than a porcelain plate, fake tan, uplifted boobs, cinched-in waist, false eyelashes, make-up caked on her face, and lots and lots of teased hair cascading down her back.
People gasp, clap and cheer.This girl, this not particularly remarkable girl whose biggest assets are – let’s be honest – her boobs and a pretty face, has somehow turned herself into an icon.
Some people think she’s a good thing – a living, breathing emblem of in-yer-face girl power; others think that with her fake-everything and out-of-control love life she has denigrated what it means to be a female.
She’s a businesswoman worth £40 million-plus, a horse-mad country girl who struck gold.
She’s hard-faced, hard-nosed, surrounded by yes-people – yet she’s continually having her heart broken by men. She is also, according to her, a loyal friend, a fiercely supportive mother.
Whatever she is, we all think we know her. 'The Pricey’, as she has taken to calling herself, has somehow become part of our national identity.
A week later I am sitting with The Pricey in a plush hotel in Soho. She looks entirely different from the coiffed version of the week before.
Back then, on stage, putting the contestants through their paces, she seemed as tough as nails – mouthy, defensive, constantly fiddling with her uncomfortable dress, staring at everyone as if challenging them to a duel.
'Why do you want to be famous?’ she asked the contestants in her distinctive voice, Sarf London-meets-Essex.
'Do you know what it is? It’s hell.’ She then rolled her eyes as the audience whooped.
'I just want to be like you,’ the girl contestant said.
'No you don’t!’ The Pricey retorted.
Today she is much more relaxed. She looks about 10 years younger. Her hair is long and straight. She has very little make-up on and is wearing white, ripped jeans, brown boots and a T-shirt, She is – and always was – a very pretty girl.
'D’ya know, when I was at school no one thought I was pretty,’ she says. 'I used to tell everyone I was going to be famous but everyone used to laugh at me.’
But famous she is. She’s a one-woman, money-making machine. Her books, of which there are 45, including her autobiographies, novels and children’s stories, sell by the cartload.
'No one wanted to know when I first suggested I did an autobiography,’ she says. 'I got turned down by everyone but then John Blake said he’d publish me. I made a fortune for him!
'Then he signed Jodie Marsh to do a book. I’m very loyal but how dare he! She was supposed to be a rival of mine!’
Price then jumped ship to Random House and has made the company a fortune.
'Yeah, they are very popular, my books,’ she says. She’s quite happy to give credit to her ghost-writer, Rebecca Farnworth. 'I think of the plot; Rebecca writes them,’ she says.
Her television programmes, of which there have been many, are watched by hundreds of thousands of fans.
We’ve all seen her life, warts and all. How, then, can she complain about media intrusion?
'Yeah, I know,’ she says, 'but that don’t mean those photographers should camp outside my house. I deserve some privacy, don’t I?’
Yet she seems to be hopeless at running her private life. She’s had loads of boyfriends, including the pop singers Gareth Gates and Dane Bowers, all of whom she writes about in her autobiographies.
She’s had two marriages – to the singer Peter Andre, the father of two of her three children – and to Alex Reid, a cage fighter.
She is now going out with Leandro Penna, an Argentine television presenter who speaks very basic English.
She met him at a party in America earlier this year and he now lives with her. He goes everywhere with her. He’s here today – tall, dark, handsome, smiling sweetly at everyone and looking utterly confused.
Price tells me he’s brilliant with her kids. 'He takes them riding. He’s really good at riding. He played polo in Argentina.’ Leandro nods at me and smiles. He must be the ultimate male accessory: a good-looking man you don’t have to talk to.
When I first met her seven years ago Price was just pregnant with Junior, her son with Andre. She was accompanied by her PR, who represented Andre too, and Price was very muted.
'I bet every time I went to say something, they told me not to say it?’
Yes, they did.
'Yeah, well, I’m not with them anymore,’ says Price. CAN Associates and Price severed their relationship when she and Peter Andre broke up.
'It wasn’t great,’ she says of that period, when the world turned against the partying Price, who was in Ibiza getting drunk and misbehaving.
'But really I don’t care what people write about me. I got over that years ago, you know?’
Then she leans towards me. 'How do you think I am now?’ she says in a challenging fashion. She looks at me. 'You answer it. Am I different now?’
'Relaxed?’ I say hopefully. 'You seem more relaxed.’
She sinks back into her seat. 'Good,’ she says. 'Yes, I am more relaxed.’
I sink back into my own seat. Thank goodness for that.
When she first started out, in the 1990s, she was Jordan. 'Jordan was wild,’ says Price, laughing. 'Jordan liked to drink and party and fall out of dresses.’
Jordan slept with men and then told everyone about it. Jordan posed topless, did Playboy and became famous for having her breasts enhanced.
Back in 1994 Katie Price had finished school and didn’t know what to do with herself. 'My uncle’s in the music business and he told me I didn’t have a good enough voice to sing and that I was too short to model.’
She was working as a temp when one day a girl in her office said she was a part-time photographer and she’d like to take some photos of her.
'We went down to Brighton beach and we did some shots and we sent them to Page Three and…’
'They were topless?’ I ask her, shocked.
'Yeah,’ says Price, not turning a hair.
'On a public beach?’
She laughs. 'I’ve never had any problem with that!’ she says.
'I grew up in a very relaxed family. My dad walked around naked all the time. Most of my friends have seen his todger!’
Page Three turned her down but the pictures were spotted by someone at an agency. 'They signed me up and the next thing I knew I was doing Page Three.
'That’s what I want other girls to know: just because people initially turn you down, it don’t mean nothing. You gotta keep trying.’
She used the name Jordan because she didn’t want her family to be embarrassed about what she was doing. 'My mum was working in the City. She didn’t want people to know I was her daughter.’
Her brother’s friends had posters of her on their walls. 'He never even said I was his sister!’ None of this seems to bother her. 'Why would it? We’re a close family.’
I ask her what she thinks has made her so special. After all, there are hundreds of glamour models looking for a break.
'I worked really hard,’ she said. 'I went to every single casting, whether or not I thought I’d get the job. I drove around London every day in my little VW just to get anything that was going.
'Believe me, I really worked for it. I did my homework as well. I bought all those calendars, the Pirelli one and that, and I studied them.’
Yet none of this explains her all-encompassing celebrity status. Some people assume that she is just incredibly single-minded, using everything about herself for publicity.
On the one hand, she’s undeniably a commercial wizard, on the other a disaster.
'Look at my marriage to Alex,’ she says, rolling her eyes. 'I really pick ’em, don’t I?’
Strangely, I end up bumping into Reid a day later and he isn’t impressive. He seems rather annoyingly vain.
That aside, anyone could have told her that bouncing out of a marriage, going through a very public fall-out and then, a nanosecond later, marrying a cross-dressing cage-fighter was not the best thing to do.
'Oh, I dunno,’ she says. She fiddles with her hair. 'I just get caught up in things.’
I think it would be fair to say that The Pricey doesn’t do introspection. Personally, I think she hurls herself from one thing to the next to avoid dealing with any of it.
The only area of her life that she protects from public view is her children. She has Harvey, nine, her son with the footballer Dwight Yorke, and Junior, six, and Princess, four, with Andre.
She kept them very much out of the limelight until the comedian Frankie Boyle made an extremely distasteful joke about Harvey, who is severely disabled, on Channel 4.
Price was incensed. 'I had no apology,’ she says. 'It was horrible and not at all funny. I just thought it was disgusting.’ She decided then to make a documentary about her life with Harvey.
It showed the daily traumas of dealing with a child who is severely autistic and suffers from debilitating illnesses.
'I didn’t do it to get sympathy,’ she says. 'I don’t want sympathy from no one. I did it to try and show people what it’s like to have a disabled child.’
The programme was well received. 'I had a lot of letters from other families,’ she says. 'I hope it helped people. It’s bloody hard work.’
But, as she says, she likes working hard. She says what she’s really interested in now is modelling again.
'You can tell everyone that,’ she says. 'I want to get my kit off. I want to do Playboy, full-on and that.’ Everyone in the room giggles nervously. 'No, I do!’ she says, pretending to be hurt.
And now she’s looking for another 'her’…
'Not another me,’ she corrects me. 'If I was looking for another me, I’d be doing myself out of a job wouldn’t I?’
She says that, in fact, she’s looking for someone quite different. 'I want to launch someone,’ she says, 'but they’ve got to be the right person.
'What I’m giving them is a fast track. I’m telling them all about the business and how to cope with the press’ – she gives me a look – 'but they’ve got to do the rest.’
Just as I am about to leave I ask her what she’d do if she did meet another her. She looks round the room. There is silence.
Then she throws back her head and laughs.
'Another me?’ she says. 'You gotta be joking! There’s no one else like me.’
Source: telegraph.co.uk
