This is something I never thought I’d say: I feel sorry for Katie Price. The former glamour model was arrested at Heathrow Airport last week as she returned to the UK from Turkey, having undergone her sixth facelift.
There was something about her battered, bandaged face, her swollen lips, and her bird-like figure with her two awkward-looking, balloon-like breasts that seemed tragic, very sad. As always, she was putting on a brave front, but it was obvious that her soul was broken.
I realise that this may not be a popular opinion. Many people, if they care at all, take the view that his downfall – his two bankruptcies, the first in 2019 and the second in March this year (his arrest came after he failed to attend a hearing relating to his £760,000 debt to HMRC) – are his own fault, the result of disorganisation, greed, moral degeneracy and general waste.
Her chaotic love affairs, her five children with three fathers, her multiple traffic violations, her dirty family life… she is, many will say, the architect of her own misery and deserves everything that happens to her.
I disagree. It’s true that she has made mistakes and that she has ignored the rules and tried to game the system. It’s true that she is vulgar and generally rude, but deep down there is someone who deserves our sympathy, not our opprobrium. She needs help, not punishment.
Katie Price was arrested at Heathrow Airport last week as she returned to the UK from Turkey after undergoing her sixth facelift.
Anyone with a heart can see that she’s not doing well. As someone who remembers her when she burst onto the scene in the late 90s, as her alter ego Jordan, I think she’s always been… well, a little over the top.
Her lack of physical or personal boundaries was always apparent. There was a sense that nothing was off limits, as long as the price was right. And for a long time it was. She made millions selling her body, her books, her personal life. She exposed herself at every opportunity, monetizing every inch of herself. And yet no one – certainly not herself – ever stopped to think: why?
For me it’s clear: a story as old as life itself. A Hogarthian tale of desperation and corruption, a working-class girl abandoned by her father, abused by men, with limited life options, looking for fame, fortune and a better future in all the wrong places.
If it is true, as she claims, that she was raped in a park at the age of seven, it doesn’t take a genius to see how that would have destroyed her self-esteem. Abused children always feel worthless, but at the same time they are desperate for recognition. They long for love, but don’t know how to hold on to it.
Price’s need to find validation and meaning through her multiple marriages and children is a good example of this. She destroyed what was probably her best chance for long-term stability and happiness with singer and television personality Peter Andre, also the father of her two children, Princess and Junior.
Andre was everything she longed for and probably needed – stable, a responsible father, a shrewd businessman – but she eventually left him for a bad boy, cage fighter Alex Reid, which ended in bitterness and tears. As did her subsequent marriage to stripper Kieran Hayler, the father of her two youngest children.
In all of these relationships, Price was clearly looking for something real, something lasting, a fairy-tale fantasy of romance and everlasting love. But when you’re as damaged as she is, it’s hard to resist that demon on your shoulder.
Her stated desire to have more children is part of that. Children represent a second chance, a blank slate, at least for her. Of course, any sane person looking at her situation would see that the last thing she needs is another mouth to feed. But for her, having a child represents another roll of the dice. It’s selfish and stupid, but that’s how damaged she is.
As for plastic surgery addiction, it is clearly a very expensive and extremely dangerous form of self-harm. She seeks refuge in these surgeries. They are, evidently, a way of escaping from herself and her mistakes, once again her attempt to start over by modifying her appearance.
So yes, she is a mess of a woman, her own worst enemy, the architect of her own downfall. But still, I feel sorry for her. Because, after all, the only person she is really hurting is herself.
For all his brashness and attitude, he is a sad, lonely, and ultimately tragic figure, whose only real source of income (his looks) is slipping away from him.
But she does have one success story: her eldest son, Harvey, who is disabled. The way she has cared for him and stood up for him in the face of vile online trolls is a testament to her strength of character.
I hope that for her sake the courts will take this into account when deciding her fate. And I hope that she gets the help she needs and that one day she learns to love herself for who she is and not for what she thinks people want her to be.
As the Government prepares to impose VAT on school fees, forcing thousands of children into the overcrowded public sector, how long will it be before Rachel Reeves turns her attention to other rich sources of income and targets other VAT-exempt services, such as private healthcare?
Thanks to long waiting lists in the National Health Service, more people than ever are turning to the private sector. Will Comrade Reeves now consider this a bourgeois “luxury” and fleece them accordingly?
Women fighting a losing battle
Athlete Caster Semenya, who has 5-alpha-reductase 2 deficiency (5ARD), an intersex condition that results in underdevelopment of the male genitalia, is convinced that “my internal testicles don’t make me any less of a woman.”
I’m afraid that’s not true, since, internal or not, those testicles still produce testosterone in the male range, with all the inherent physical advantages.
Boxer Imane Khelif has just won gold in the women’s welterweight division in Paris, destroying her opponents at every stage.
That’s why boxer Imane Khelif, who suffers from a similar condition and also possesses a Y chromosome, has just won women’s welterweight gold in Paris, steamrolling her opponents at every turn.
No one disputes that both of them, along with a third, Taiwanese featherweight Lin Yu-ting, identify as women. The question is whether it is fair for them to compete against other women who do not have their advantages and who could never reach their levels of strength, no matter how hard they trained.
The only way to achieve this would be by doping, that is, flooding your body with male hormones, which, of course, would be cheating.
Gymnastics is, without a doubt, my favorite Olympic sport. Women like Simone Biles and Rebeca Andrade seem to defy all laws of nature and exhibit the utmost grace. But what’s even more astonishing is their dedication to appearance: long, shiny talons, sky-high hair, elaborate makeup and jewelry. It’s a dance floor, not a vaulting floor, ladies!
Women like Simone Biles and Rebeca Andrade seem to defy all the laws of nature while displaying the utmost grace, writes Sarah Vine
I thought nothing could top the French pole vaulter whose prominent crotch cost him his Olympic dream, but then along came Australian breakdancer ‘Raygun’, whose hilariously bad-it-was-good routine made Eddie ‘the Eagle’ Edwards look like a pro. You’ve got to be kidding, right?
The admirable speed and efficiency with which the courts have brought to justice those involved in the far-right riots that erupted across Britain following the Southport stabbings shows that, when this country wants to, it can still act in an orderly manner.
But it also raises the question: why is the accused murderer, Axel Rudakubana, not due to stand trial until January next year? Surely the least the grieving families deserve is the same swift justice that was given to the victims of last week’s riots.
There is little chance of the BBC ever recovering the £200,000 it was paid back by Huw Edwards. The man will never work again.
