As Junior Andre breaks down over ‘neglect’ by mum Katie Price, director who spent 6 months at her home reveals why Peter Andre is still at the root of her troubles 17 years later: ‘For her the conversation hasn’t ended’
Over the three decades since she shot to fame as a Page 3 girl, Katie Price has turned her unedifying private life into a public spectacle. We’ve watched on in horror at her wild antics – the car-crash romances, boob jobs, bankruptcies, breakdowns and arrests – but what’s undeniable is that the public has been hooked… and Katie Price has kept her name in the spotlight.
One of the most infamous celebrities of our time, the ex-glamour model formerly known as Jordan is now the subject of a new Sky documentary, Katie Price: Nothing To Hide, in which she reveals her ‘authentic’ self. And while many observers see Katie as a fame-hungry fading reality star who will resort to the most extreme behaviour and share it with the world to remain relevant, she hopes viewers will be surprised and won over when they see the ‘real’ her.
‘I feel there’s a lot to me that people don’t realise,’ says Katie, 48. ‘They only judge me by speculative media stories… I want this to be a real, authentic side of me that people have never seen. I want people to see the real me.’ She claims she’s ‘a lot more complex’ than people realise. ‘I think people will see someone who’s been through a lot, made mistakes, learned lessons and kept going,’ she says. ‘That’s who I am.’
The series does present a more vulnerable side of her than we’re used to seeing. For example, she becomes so emotional while talking about her first husband, Peter Andre – to whom she was married from 2005-09 after they met in the I’m A Celebrity jungle – that filming had to be halted. ‘Some of the places they took me back to meant I had to put myself back into those situations,’ she says. ‘I found a lot of that difficult. My brain would go fuzzy because I didn’t want to think about how I felt then.’
One of the most infamous celebrities of our time, the ex-glamour model formerly known as Jordan is now the subject of a new Sky documentary, Katie Price: Nothing To Hide
Katie Price hopes viewers will be surprised and won over when they see the ‘real’ her. Pictured in a 1996 photoshoot
Award-winning director Paddy Wivell, known for powerful documentaries including 2024’s Hell Jumper about volunteer rescuers in Ukraine, watched her becoming emotionally overwhelmed as they filmed.
‘The energy drained out of her and she couldn’t continue,’ he says. ‘It exhausted her because she’s living with the traumatic effects of the abrupt end of a relationship. My sense was that she’s learned to bury the pain in order to survive it. She told me she’d barely spent five minutes in a room alone with Peter since their split, so to her the conversation hasn’t ended. She says in the film, “I would love you to interview him, and I’d love to sit and reminisce with him.”’ Andre refused to participate, although other former lovers such as Gareth Gates, Dane Bowers and Alex Reid do appear, as do her family and close friends such as Kerry Katona.
Paddy filmed with Katie around ten times over six months up to May this year at her home in West Sussex. ‘There were a lot of cups of tea and dippy eggs,’ he recalls. ‘Her eldest son Harvey was around a lot. She had no airs or graces – she’s got really blue language but I don’t mind that. She’s always broken rules and she will not be controlled. She had a kind of punk spirit that is just thrilling. I love rebellious people. And she’s a comedian too. She doesn’t give herself credit for how funny she is.’
Paddy talks Katie through her rise to fame and her string of doomed romances, including her four-month fling with Pop Idol sensation Gareth Gates in 2002. Katie was 24 and pregnant with Harvey by her ex-boyfriend Dwight Yorke, the footballer, when she began a clandestine affair with 17-year-old Gareth, who was a virgin at the time (she says ‘everybody hated me’ after she revealed that fact to the papers, months after they’d broken up).
‘We’d drive to my friend Sally’s flat and pull out the sofa bed,’ recalls Katie. ‘He knew I was pregnant. He would put his hand on my belly and I’d say, “Does it put you off?” and it didn’t at all.’
Katie’s ex-husband Peter Andre refused to participate in the show, with director Paddy Wivell saying: ‘She told me she’d barely spent five minutes in a room alone with Peter since their split.’ Pictured: Peter Andrew and Katie Price in 2006
Both were keen to keep their liaison secret – he was told having a girlfriend would damage his career, she was worried about his age – but it became serious. ‘I did love her, but I was too young,’ says Gareth in the show. ‘She was more vocal about love than I was; within weeks she was mentioning marriage and spending the rest of her life with me.’
The romance came to an abrupt end when pictures of Katie entering his hotel room appeared in the papers. He always believed Katie was responsible for tipping off the photographer but she always denied it. On camera, Paddy reveals to Gareth that he’s spoken to the photographer, who confirmed that she didn’t tip him off, and Gareth expresses great relief.
‘That was an amazing moment, to relay that and the impact on Gareth,’ says Paddy. ‘He’d invested in Kate, but he’d been told she betrayed him. He’d carried that from the age of 17 so it did feel like a big revelation. A lot of people think her affair with Gareth was a one-night stand, but when you hear the truth, there’s something much more tender about it.’
In fact, Paddy says he realised Katie’s former flames all had deep feelings for her. ‘Things have gone wrong in her relationships and some of the men were burned by certain things, but there was always this really rich set of feelings around her. Alex Reid [the cage fighter who she married after splitting from Peter Andre] is not entirely complimentary about her and with good reason, but you can also feel the weight of feeling there. It’s tender.’ Katie was ordered to pay Reid compensation after he sued her for releasing details about his sex life.
But it was Dane Bowers from boy band Another Level who she says was the love of her life, before jealousy became their undoing. He didn’t want other men ogling her topless photos, and she wasn’t happy when he got close to Victoria Beckham as they promoted their single Out Of Your Mind. The final straw came when he gave her an ultimatum over releasing a racy calendar – she went ahead and did it, and he left her. After a half-hearted suicide attempt, Katie went round to his flat when he wasn’t there and stole every right shoe from his precious collection of trainers. ‘Revenge,’ she says, ‘I love it.’
It was Dane Bowers from boy band Another Level who Katie Price says was the love of her life, before jealousy became their undoing. Pictured together in 2000
Another subject addressed is Katie’s finances. She’s said to have amassed a £45 million fortune, but is now thought to be worth less than £1 million after two bankruptcies
Katie Price is now in another turbulent romance that has resulted in her fourth marriage, to Dubai-based Brit Lee Andrews
In the show she says her problem is that she’s never been able to stand up for herself in relationships. ‘When I’ve been in love I’ve been blind. I’ve always needed a man, always been vulnerable and needy, so as much as I’ve got this power image, they chip away at it and it makes me smaller as a person.’
She’s now in another turbulent romance that has resulted in her fourth marriage, to Dubai-based Brit Lee Andrews. Paddy included this liaison in the show briefly ‘to help understand the pattern of her relationships with men – and it certainly does follow that’.
Another subject addressed is Katie’s finances. She’s said to have amassed a £45 million fortune at the peak of her modelling and reality TV career, but is now thought to be worth less than £1 million after two bankruptcies. ‘The thing that comes across is she doesn’t know where the money’s gone,’ says Paddy. ‘I think exes, divorces and some bad choices. But she’s not really guided by money. She values fame and her career, but the money isn’t hugely important.’
Of course, for many people Katie Price is synonymous with boob jobs. She has been open about her extensive cosmetic work, undergoing an estimated 17 breast surgeries, multiple facelifts, brow lifts and nose jobs. Today she looks cosmetically disfigured and painfully thin. ‘It’s concerning, right?’ says Paddy. ‘I share the concern and so do her family.
‘It’s not in the film but she talked to me about body dysmorphia,’ he continues, referring to the mental disorder in which victims suffer intense shame over perceived body defects. ‘But that doesn’t prevent her wishing to carry on having cosmetic procedures. She gets something profound from that process that she’s not willing to give up. That’s a worry.’
So is Katie Price simply a fame-hungry D-lister, or the complex, vulnerable and flawed human being with a rebellious spirit she wants us to see? ‘I hope people think, “We shouldn’t have given her such a hard time. We misunderstood what she’s really like,”’ says Katie. ‘I hope they see that I never give up. I hope they’ll understand that there’s a real person behind the headlines, a real family, real emotions, real struggles, real mistakes and real achievements.’
