Watching Jordan stride across the forecourt of a Surrey petrol station, all
biltong thighs and lioness eyes, is a treat I shall never forget. Onlookers
choke on their breakfast crisps as the 31-year-old glamour model and
endorsement machine fills up her white Range Rover — a fridge on wheels —
before, finally, a plump girl with train-tracks can bear it no longer.
She forms her face into a silent scream and piles out of her car, dusting
Doritos crumbs out of her cleavage. She rushes over, screaming: “Omigod, we
di’n’t think it wus you!” and — do I hear her right? — “We love you.”
“Fanks,” replies Jordan, quietly agreeing to a photograph, before proceeding
to the till. It’s rather sweet to see this icon of instant celebrity — a
woman worth an estimated £30m, “author” of 22 pony books and innumerable
“autobiographies”, face of a perfume, a lingerie line, KP Equestrian wear
and soon, she hopes, customised horseboxes, a Katie Price credit card and
Katie Price airlines — filling her own car and queueing up to pay.
But there are no airs with Jordan, née Katie Price. Quite the opposite: she
has just come back from “letting my hair down in Ibiza” after a painful
split from her husband of four years, Peter Andre, the Australian pop star.
Ibiza was a rabid disco binge that saw her tearing up the island in a gold
lamé outfit, reportedly begging for sex on the dance floor and — according
to the tabloids, at least — shouting at a fellow clubber: “I’m going to cut
your f****** face!” — an accusation she denies.
“They have slated me every day for seven weeks,” she sighs, if not exactly
proudly, but ... Well, it is a kind of achievement, as is, I suppose,
appearing on the cover of the Daily Star for 10 days straight. “Then when I
do something really good with my horses, do they put it in? No.”
So today it’s back to work. We meet at her house, a converted nursing home in
a quiet dell near Croydon, south London, that she shares with her three
children Harvey, 7, Junior, 4, and Princess Tiaamii, who will be two
tomorrow. She is a lot smaller than anticipated, childlike almost, and dark,
like a gypsy from a Victorian picture book. Her flat, black hair is scraped
into a punishing ponytail; her boots and fleece are girlie-girl pink.
Pink is everywhere — a horsebox, a wheelbarrow ... “It just says, ‘Buy me’,
doesn’t it,” she says. At the top of the garden is a 10ft tarpaulin wall to
keep the paps out, although I sense a bit of disappointment that there
aren’t a few trying to scale it this morning at 8am.
“There were more yesterday,” she says. Later they will appear, panting. She
always slips on a pair of white Chanel sunglasses whenever she senses they
might be near (sometimes they aren’t). “I don’t want eye contact with them,”
she explains.
Oh, you can see why they love her. It’s such a brilliant game! Price has been
famous from the age of 18, her life one endless photo opportunity. She is
certainly good-looking, but so orange I honestly can’t tell how much make-up
she is wearing and I have to stop myself staring at her lips, especially
when she says: “I’m very low maintenance. Just nails and clean hair.” She is
naturally thin but is trying out a new trainer, a cage fighter, at the local
gym. Do your boobs hurt when you do the cage fighting? “Nah. My boobs have
never stopped me doing nothing,” she replies deadpan.
After half an hour of driving we arrive at the stables, near Haywards Heath in
West Sussex, and are met by Andrew, the hot (married) dressage instructor
who has already had to deny repeatedly that he is her “other man”.
“I have had no sex whatsoever, nothing,” she clarifies, although, she tells me
later, she’s actually got her eye on Anthony. “What? Andrew at the stables?”
I scream, already delirious at the confusing centrifuge of her love life.
“No, you doughnut,” she says. “Anthony.” Oh, Anthony. Of course.
Anthony is the 28-year-old model she has been cavorting with in Ibiza, but
even though she is keen, she says he can’t cope with the media attention.
“We haven't had sex and we’re not dating,” she says. “Okay,” I say, making a
note. “It’s really unfair on him,” she continues. “What can I do? I can only
protest that we haven’t had sex. But he’s gorgeous.” Besides, she’s also got
her eye on “a massive celeb. A sportsman”. Oooh, tell me. A racing driver?
“No.” A footballer? “No.” I’m running out of ideas. A trampolinist? “I’m not
saying.”
Pete’s totally off the menu now. Any chance of a rapprochement, I ask.
“Never,” she says. So it’s two fingers to Andre and it is also two fingers
to the Establishment, in the shape of a polo day that she is staging in aid
of Vision, a charity she supports because of her blind son Harvey. Last
summer she was excluded from lunch at the Cartier International polo
tournament, even though she had offered to buy a table — a snub she
condemned as “pure snobbery”.
She loves playing polo and owns eight horses of varying disciplines herself,
spending “hundreds of thousands” on them — her greatest extravagance. They
all have two names as well. Blaze — also known as Jordan’s Glamour Girl — is
led out, complete with diamanté tack. She hops into the saddle and drifts
out slowly and artfully from the stables to give the paps, straining at the
gate 50 yards away, ample time for the shot. On the way back we are pursued
by three of them and later that day there will be two other opportunities —
at a supermarket and outside Nobu.
Her relationship with the camera is feral: she craves it and needs it and woe
betide anyone who gets in the way. Still, she’ll protest that media
intrusion has ruined her life: “I’ve had the worst headlines. Whatever.”
Oooh, she’s a brilliant one-off, Jordan, and never mind if the raw materials
are just that. Tomorrow it’s Harvey’s sports day. “Before I went to one I
thought, how can a blind person run? But they’re aided. They have a mums’
race, too. Very embarrassing. I’ll just make out my boobs hurt and I can’t
do it.”
Katie Price, patron of the Duke of Essex Polo Trophy, will be the official
starter at the Great Britain v Argentina polo match on Saturday at Gaynes
Park in Epping, Essex; £25 of every VIP ticket goes to Vision.
www.essexpolocup.com
