Bak's TV Week: Katie Price

Never one to display a bit of grace and dignity when behaving like a boorish, loud-mouthed slapper will do, Katie Price is setting the record straight (again).

 

This time, on the very public breakdown of her very public marriage. As if the tawdry revelations in her interview with Piers Morgan weren't enough to keep even the strongest of stomachs turning until well into 2010.

 

Katie is back in her natural home – the tacky universe of ITV2 – for What Katie Did Next. Except it's not Katie. It's Jordan. It was always Jordan. This ludicrous split-personality thing that she's been peddling to the gullible gutter press (and her ex-husband) for the last three years didn't fool me for a second. The simple fact is that there was never any difference between the two 'personalities' (and I use the term advisedly).

 

Perhaps it was merely a device to allow this perennially tedious airhead to talk about herself even more than she already did. After all, if you have two distinct personalities it stands to reason that you have the scope to be twice as self-obsessed as you were before.

 

But you have to wonder what the point is when the only way even Jordan's friends can distinguish which alter-ego they're dealing with is by whether she's got her tits out or not.

 

If you haven't already guessed: I can't stand Jordan. Everything about her grates with me. That wheedling, flat Essex monotone, about as sexy as a wet weekend in a Travelodge just outside Stevenage.

 

The fact that everything that comes out of her mouth is so clichéd it makes Jeremy Kyle look like a paragon of originality. Her face. Her disfigured tits. Her public treatment of Peter Andre (though, frankly, he's as much of a media whore as she is in my view).

 

 

The Jordan Show

What's worse is that she attracts the most ridiculously hyperbolic praise from all the worst kinds of people.

 

Witness the chavs fawning around her as she visits Ibiza for a 'private holiday' (with the world's press and a camera crew in tow).

 

"She's so glamorous," coo a pair of half-blind Irish girls while a bloke (presumably with the sun in his eyes) adds: "She's sexy, I'm tellin' ya." Another fan gets her tuppence-worth in with the claim that: "She's such a great role model; a great mum."

 

It would be churlish of me to have a pop at Jordan just because her fans have a bizarre rose-tinted opinion of her, so I won't. What I will say is that the notion that Jordan is considered a 'great role model' by anyone – ANYONE – is a damning indictment of our once great nation.

 

So what did Katie do next then? And does anyone really care? First off, Katie wants to make it plain that she's over Pete. She does this by constant reminders to camera that she's once again single. I don't know whether this is supposed to titillate or terrify the nation's menfolk, but it certainly does nothing to convince us that she's really over Andre. Nor does the crossing out of her 'Pete' tattoo.

 

Even her friends seem to think she's piling it on a bit thick with one of them even having a rare rebellious (and lucid) moment, telling Jordan that she seems hysterical. However these revelatory moments are few and far between. I wonder how complicit this bunch of hangers-on were in turning her into the mess she is today?

 

Amid the bantering, boozing and paparazzi-baiting, there are few occasions when Jordan's acolytes offer anything other than a permanently available posse with whom to tear up the town.

 

Does she pay for all their holidays and nights out? Why else would they stick around? Surely not to listen to Jordan holding court on her favourite subject – Jordan – round a pool at some hotel on Ibiza? "Isn't it interesting to know who my next partner will be?" she drawls as the blood drains from her friends' faces and one or two of them visibly start to nod off. Even with all the glitz, glamour and freebies, it must be awful being a friend of Jordan.

 

 

The Price Of Being Katie

Imagine having to listen to that sexless, flat-lining monotone all day every day. And that lifeless whoop she adds to the end of nearly every sentence.

 

"We're having it large… woo!" And: "I'm an independent woman... woo!"

 

It's a horrible noise, like the sound of pent-up gas escaping from a three-day-old corpse. Or a slowly deflating swimming pool inflatable. Every time I hear it, I just about lose the will to live.

 

And it wouldn't only be listening. Just think of having to gaze upon that repulsive countenance day after day. Imagine being asked "how do I look?" every five minutes and having to resist the urge to reply: "Well, Jordan, you look like you've been badly beaten up and dipped in a bucket of Ronseal.

 

You look like you've had a couple of partially inflated footballs forced under your ill-fitting boob tube. And, frankly, you look cheap. Horribly, horribly cheap."

 

What Katie Did Next won't stop with Jordan having her Pete tattoo removed (by the way, did anyone notice the swastika on the tattooists wall?). It won't stop with her flashing her tits at drunken revellers in Ibiza.

 

Nor will it stop with her pouring more shame on those poor, tragic kids of hers (whoever thought it was a good idea to let Kiddicare.com sponsor a programme like this one needs their head examined). God only knows where it will go next. But I for one won't be tuning in to find out.

 

Quotes Of The Week

 

"Welcome to my journey of... independent woman! Woo!" - Woo indeed, Jordan.

 

"You could be gone tomorrow so you just got to get on wiv it." - Jordan gives Socrates a run for his money.

 

"I wrote this book with Catherine." - No, Jordan, Catherine wrote the book all by herself.

 

"I'm Katie Price tonight: sophisticated and elegant." - Er, what?

 

"I fink that's dead sexy." - Yes Jordan, in the same way that a wet kipper is dead sexy.

 

 

 

 

Bak On TV

Read more of Stuart Bak's TV reviews in our Couch Potato archive. Do you agree with Stu's opinions? Disagree? Drop him a line on bakontv@hotmail.co.uk