It's been a busy week for Kerry Katona, a woman whose bargain-basement approximation of celebrity meltdown places her as the Iceland frozen-fruit kebab to Britney Spears' foie gras cromesquis. Kerry's rollercoaster of a life is often breathtaking. One minute she's pregnant - fittingly, by about 60 seconds - and announcing it to the media before she tells her own family; the next she has apparently miscarried (and announced it to the media). At the time of writing, she is in fact still pregnant, and the money she receives from various associated newspaper and magazine deals will come in handy because this week it was also reported that Kerry is struggling with cashflow problems.
She has received a £750,000 tax bill, but this does of course mean that she has earned millions. Earning that sort of money and somehow being "skint" is the classic celebrity curse of relative poverty and not being able to scale back one's expenditure when receipts begin to slow down. The enduring and defining image of Katona's tragicomic celebrity lifestyle - a Matalan card on her bedside table, apparently used for chopping up cocaine - sums this situation up perfectly. It encapsulated the lifestyle of a woman who saves up the points on her high-street shopping with the hope that, after many months, she will save 10% on a cardigan, but who, meanwhile, seemingly thinks nothing of chucking 50 quid up her hooter.
Katona is skint in the same way that Michael Jackson is skint. Jacko could sell Neverland Ranch tomorrow and buy himself a comparatively modest £5m apartment, but he can't, because that's not what Michael Jackson does. Katona may have slightly less choice over whether she needs to sell her £134,000 Lamborghini, but she's in the same trap - keeping up the appearances of a celebrity lifestyle when things get a bit awkward with the bank manager.
This does raise the question of how flogging the most personal and upsetting details of her personal life is really helping Kerry to keep up any appearances at all, of course, but that - like excessive spending - is a difficult habit for celebrities to break.
