‘Everyone thinks they know me – but, trust me, they don’t know the half of it,” says Katie Price in that unmistakable wasp-in-a-jam-jar voice during the opening montage of Katie Price: My Crazy Life (10 July, 10pm, Quest Red), at which point an entire nation falls about laughing. Never mind the pile of autobiographies, the endless tabloid exclusives and the steady stream of grenades lobbed by Price on Twitter. Such has been her ubiquity over the past 15 years, there are days when I’ve fully expected to find her touching up her lippy in my bathroom.
Still, there’s no such thing as over-exposure in Priceworld, so off we trot to the Sussex pile that she shares with her third husband, the former stripper Kieran Hayler, her five children, assorted cats, dogs, sheep, goats and horses, plus Marvin the iguana. Unlike her previous reality series Katie & Peter, Katie & Peter: Stateside, Katie & Peter: The Baby Diaries, Katie & Peter: Unleashed et al, Hayler’s name doesn’t feature in the title, which hardly bodes well for his long-term prospects. Certainly, you can’t help wondering if there is a link between his much-reported infidelity in their first year of marriage – a topic raised by Price less than five minutes into the show – and his principal role here, shovelling sheep shit.
Anyone worried that there’s nothing left to know about Katie Price, that every corner of her home has already undergone rigorous inspection by the British public, will be relieved to learn that this is a different house to the one she shared with her previous partners Peter Andre and Alex the Cage Fighter. So, y’know, in the absence of actual drama, we can always admire the new furniture.
Katie is the centrepiece, of course, and no one is allowed to forget it. Thus, in the opening episode, we watch as Hayler and the kids troop to the garden with Price to clear out two shipping containers full of the props and trinkets of yesteryear (“What is that?” yelps 10-year-old Princess as Hayler pulls out an old poster of her mum with her tits out), and sit wearily through the non-suspense of Katie unveiling a new portrait of herself commissioned from a fan on Instagram. Later, the tension is ratcheted up as Hayler and Price bicker over the plural of sheep. “If you’ve got a lot of something, you put the ‘s’ on the end,” insists Price in all her unassailable logic.
At 39, Price is a more muted version of her former gobby self, seemingly at her most content hanging around the house in her sweatpants and cuddling her kids. But this, clearly, doesn’t make for explosive TV. And so it’s with an air of desperation that, to live up to the “crazy” in the show’s title, Hayler arrives with two alpacas that are herded into the kitchen to meet Price’s eldest son, Harvey. Later, they are taken to the paddock where they are chased in circles by two angry horses as Price looks on, her face as inscrutable as the iguana’s.
Instead of such contrived drama, I’d like to see the famously hardworking Price embrace the boring and welcome arrival of middle age by putting her feet up, bingeing on box sets and filling up on crisps and pizza. Perhaps she could do some gardening. Future titles in her glittering television portfolio could include Katie Puts Out the Bins, Katie Orders a Pizza, and Katie: The Clematis Diaries. Seriously, babes, take a break. You’ve earned it.
