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'SACRIFICIAL LAMB'
Peter Andre used my daughter Katie Price to pursue his dream of becoming rich and famous, says her mum Amy
KATIE Price’s mum says her ex-husband Peter Andre used her daughter to pursue his dream of becoming rich and famous — and then left her at her lowest ebb.
In her sensational new book, Amy Price reveals how she warned Katie not to get with “manipulative” Peter before they both entered TV’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! in 2004.
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But Amy says Katie, now 45, ignored her and the pair entered a five-year relationship riddled with jealousy, where Peter manipulated rows on their reality TV series to make her daughter look bad.
Amy, who has spent five years battling a terminal illness, writes: “I’ve lived on the sidelines for years, forced to sit back as lie after lie has been printed about my daughter.
"As I approached death, I thought it was high time I speak up and set the record straight.
“Her marriage to this man left her at her lowest ebb and set the scene for further toxic betrothals.
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“He wanted to be rich and famous, and my daughter unwittingly became part of the plan.
“My daughter is no angel, but she became a sacrificial lamb in a celebrity slaughter the moment she paired up with Peter Andre.”
Amy spoke to Peter — who found fame in the Nineties with the song Mysterious Girl — on the phone the night before they entered the camp.
She warned Katie, who had pictures of the singer on her wall as a teenager, not to “end up with him”.
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Amy, 71, writes: “From the word go, something didn’t feel right about Peter; I had an inkling that he wasn’t who he claimed to be.
“He came across as gushing and gentlemanly, but I sensed a manipulative side to his character; a man who spoke from the mouth rather than the heart.
“His career was in decline and I think he saw an opportunity in my daughter, an opportunity he was quick to seize.
“As the show aired I met Pete’s agent for lunch and she expressed an interest in managing Kate alongside Pete if they ever became an item.
“I thought it was an unusual thing to say and that it was highly unlikely they would get together.
“Meanwhile, Pete suggested to Kate in the jungle they play along for the cameras to prevent them from being voted out, and I didn’t feel comfortable seeing her being drawn into that sort of gameplay.”
Katie, who was then known as the glamour model Jordan, fell “hook, line and sinker for Pete”.
Mum Amy, who has the lung condition idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, writes: “The love was genuine on Kate’s part, but it felt more business-like in the Pete camp.”
The singer moved into Katie’s house in Maresfield, near Uckfield in East Sussex.
But Amy says: “As Kate’s fame increased, I think Pete was struggling with not being in the spotlight as much.
“Meanwhile, his management seemed to want total control over Kate, who was a big money earner.
“Kate couldn’t say anything without this team of people vetting it first, or go anywhere without telling them.
"I truly believe that this is when Kate’s serious mental health problems began.
“When she asked Pete what he thought, his standard reply would be, ‘If I were you, I would do it, but of course, it’s up to you’.
";The feelings of low self-esteem that had first surfaced in Kate’s childhood were re-triggered and she began to lose any real sense of herself.”
The pair signed a deal for an ITV1 fly-on-the-wall documentary series called When Jordan Met Peter.
The series, which aired from 2004 until 2007, showed them at work, at home with their families and on holiday.
Amy writes: “Kate was herself, but Pete liked to play act. He could switch it on and off as required.”
Filming was intrusive and Katie would try to say, “You’ve got enough” but Amy says enough was never enough.
Katie also wanted to be real for the cameras — and that included the struggles faced by her son Harvey, whose dad is footballer turned manager Dwight Yorke.
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Harvey, 21, is autistic, registered blind and has septo-optic dysplasia, as well as a genetic disorder called Prader-Willi syndrome.
Amy says: “I was furious when the crew wanted to film Harvey’s hospital visits. I thought this was going too far.
“However, Kate felt it important to show doctors talking with us about Harvey’s condition.
";She also felt it would show other families with disabled children that they were not alone.
“Kate wasn’t as clever as Pete at playing the cameras.
"Sometimes she couldn’t hold back her upset, but her anxieties were met by him with, ‘What’s wrong with you now?’ or ‘Why are you going on?’ — he used to turn a subtle cry for help into an argument for the TV which would make Kate look bad.
“Kate learned when they argued, Pete would never give way. It was up to her to back down, then he would come out of his mood.”
When they had their first child together Junior, who is now 18, Peter’s parents came to stay from Cyprus, but Amy says she felt as though
“Kate always came second to her mother and father in-law”.
She writes: “As if having one mum wasn’t enough, Pete would often ring his agent telling tales about Kate, then she would ring Kate to quiz her.
“This kind of interference made me feel cross.
"It was like we had been sucked into a cult and no one except me was questioning it — but even I wasn’t doing it loudly enough.
“I always sensed that Kate had far stronger feelings for Pete than he did for her.
"Their union seemed to be a money-making opportunity for all concerned.”
But Katie was excited about marriage and fulfilling her childhood dreams of a wedding with a pink dress and Cinderella carriage.
A week before, Peter, now 50, took Junior to Cyprus to celebrate his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary leaving Katie, who was suffering post-natal depression, crying.
Amy says “building a brand” had come at a “high price” and the “pursuit of money and fame was taking precedence over everything”.
On September 10, 2005, they tied the knot in a lavish princess-themed wedding at the grand Highclere Castle, Hants, later to become the setting for period drama Downton Abbey.
OK! magazine paid £1.75million for the rights.
Amy says: “Pete was in his element that day but to me he looked like a sweaty marshmallow.
"Everything was so big and gaudy. The number of diamonds in their rings shocked me.
“Pete’s ring had 20 princess-cut diamonds mounted in platinum — yes, this is for a man! Kate’s ring had 35 princess-cut diamonds, elevated on a bridge of pink gold encrusted with pink diamonds.
“It was grotesque. It was so big it didn’t look real. It was like a toy ring out of a jamboree bag.
“Pete even had hair extensions put in before the wedding.
"They didn’t want to be outdone by each other and this streak of jealousy continued throughout the marriage.”
Amy describes it as a “management marriage” with their manager “so intrusively mixed up in their private life”.
She says one of the worst examples was at her daughter’s so-called “surprise” 30th birthday party in 2008 at the luxurious Luton Hoo Hotel in Bedfordshire.
Amy went into Katie’s bedroom to find her manager placing “sex toys and condoms” on the bed to “try spicing it up for the storyline”.
She writes: “I actually felt sick to my stomach. I knew that, due to the post-natal depression Kate was still suffering with, sex was the last thing on her mind.
“To begin with, the reality TV editing process made Kate and Pete’s post wedding relationship look all lovey-dovey and nice.
"As the relationship progressed, there were clear signs of Pete’s fragile ego impacting his relationship, not least his continual need to rid himself of intolerable feelings by giving them to my daughter.
“Time and time again, she was the one made to feel insecure and bullied, so that she became the one on the verge of breaking down.
“The more insecure she became, Pete seemed increasingly repulsed by her vulnerability and cut deeper with his insults and passive aggressive mood swings.
“True, he did not beat her black and blue but his anger manifested itself in other ways. It chipped away at her self-esteem until she was a shell of her former self.
“Ultimately, he was and still is more skilful at separating his private and public self and presenting an outward facing Mr Nice Guy persona and it has served him well.
“Conversely, Kate has always worn her heart on her sleeve and it became an increasingly thread-bare garment.”
Amy says that towards the end of their relationship the editing of their reality show seemed to make Katie look moody and uncooperative and Pete look “the good guy”.
They went on to have another child, Princess, now 15, who was born in June 2007, but Amy says soon the marriage was in trouble.
She writes: “I first got a sense something was afoot when I went to Kate’s house a couple of months before she was due to record the Katie & Peter: Stateside reality show in America in 2009.
“Kate’s house, where they were filming, was complete with turrets like something out of a fairy tale, but in reality, Kate’s life was more of a nightmare.”
Pete had a recording studio in the back garden, and he was in there with his manager and their personal assistant playing songs about a break-up.
Amy remembers: “I suddenly had the feeling something wasn’t right and the music somehow felt as though it was part of a grand plan neither Kate nor I were privy to.”
Six months later — in May 2009 — marriage was over.
The final trigger which led Pete to call it a day was a photograph of Kate at the Badminton Horse Trials with her equestrian products manager, book agent and make-up artist.
They were joined by the international dressage rider Andrew Gould and his wife Polly. Katie and Andrew went on to a club where they were photographed.
Amy writes: “I was never aware of an affair between them.
“Afterwards somehow, Pete remained the handsome prince while she became the evil snow queen.
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"Those of us closest to her know this was no accident, because she was part of a publicity machine which had sucked her in and was now viciously spitting her out.”
- The Last Word by Amy Price is published by HQ on 6th July, priced £20. All funds and royalties due to Amy Price from this book have been donated in their entirety by Amy to: Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospital, Action for Pulmonary Fibrosis and St Barnabas House, Worthing.
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