The one-woman phenomenon is typically outspoken in her new documentary series. But don’t expect much in the way of insight from this carefully manufactured show
‘In 10 years’ time,” muses 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy as he watches his employee Kenneth the page walk back to his desk, “we’ll either all be working for him or dead by his hand.” I have always felt much the same way about Katie Price, AKA Jordan, née Katrina Infield, the 90s glamour model turned celebrity turned businesswoman turned cultural behemoth who has dominated headlines, airwaves and, increasingly, television documentary slots over the last 30 years. Her ruthless commodification of herself and others around her, the vaulting ambition, the fortunes earned and spent, the battles fought, the sloughing off of abuse that would have broken any lesser being, the belligerence, the keen intelligence, the dead-eyed stare down any camera lens presented to her, the bizarre vulnerability when it comes to men, the flat monotone voice daring you to poke the basilisk … all of it together is as terrifying as it is fascinating. If she ever chooses to slip her tabloid bonds and turn her attention to wider world domination – well, I for one shall be the first to swear fealty and avoid a much more fatal kind of fate.
The latest documentary about the Price phenomenon is called Katie Price: Nothing to Hide. The Beckhams have done one each since Price’s last major outing, the Vardys have a reality show, Coleen Rooney is on the up and up – the correct pecking order must be restored. So here is Price again, on a giant sofa, vaping or chomping through snacks with her luminous giant veneers, swathed in a giant sweatshirt and pants, 10 days after her latest facial surgery and avowing honesty. “You can talk to whoever you like,” she tells the film-maker Paddy Wivell, who generally focuses on non-celebrity subjects (most recently, in Hell Jumper, on volunteers in the war in Ukraine).
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