Her legs are whittled down to the bone to such a degree that above the knee they veer dramatically inwards, rather than out. Her eyes, too, appear unhealthily recessed, while her cheeks are worryingly hollow.
This is Katie Price’s new ‘look’, which she displayed this week during a central London shopping trip with her daughter, Princess, to considerable consternation.
Every inch of the 47-year-old former glamour model is emaciated – except for her famous, surgically-enhanced cleavage.
For while the world has become accustomed to Price proudly flaunting the results of each eye-watering boob job, these new images horrified her many female fans, who absorb every detail of her life with zeal.
Online comments included that Price ‘didn’t look well’, that she must ‘need help’ – and that she was ‘such a good mum’.
‘Please look after yourself,’ begged one concerned onlooker.
Another person viewing these skeletal images was Jeany Savage, a celebrity photographer, who put Price on the path to fame almost three decades ago when she snapped the then fresh-faced 19-year-old in her east London studio. With her curvy figure and bouncy curls, Price looked more like her pretty daughter Princess than the alarming wraith-like figure she is today.
Katie Price’s legs are whittled down to the bone. Pictured with her daughter Princess Andre
And her ambition was to model for Playboy. ‘So I phoned up Playboy in America, and chatted to this lady,’ recalls Jeany. ‘They ran the pictures by Hugh Hefner, and I paid for us to go out. We went to Heff’s house for dinner and he loved her. He said, ‘Let’s do a [screen] test,’ and it worked. She got paid around £25,000 and after that everyone wanted her.’
The feeding frenzy began and Price loved it, remembers Jeany.
‘Life was about attention, attention, attention,’ she says. ‘She craved it. I remember when we were in America she’d get the papers, asking: ‘Am I in this one? Get this one and get that one.’
The pictures of Katie Price today could not be more different.
Jeany tells me she finds it traumatic to see what’s become of the once voluptuous and vibrant young woman to whom she became so close.
‘Look at her body,’ says Jeany. ‘She does not look well. She’s gone way too thin, way too far with the procedures.
‘It’s heartbreaking. I do feel sorry for her but I don’t think she feels sorry for herself. I dread to think what she’s going to do next.
‘She’s uncontrollable. She’ll destroy herself eventually, and she’s three-quarters of the way there now.’
Jeany is not alone in her concerns. Price’s behaviour and appearance is alarming her inner circle of friends, too. Some tell me she has never appeared as frail as she is now.
Her children from her first marriage to singer Peter Andre – Junior, 20, and 18-year-old Princess – are said to be ‘deeply fearful’ for her. Others openly say she is on a rapid downward spiral. ‘Katie is the person who if you woke up to a text to say she had died, you wouldn’t be surprised,’ said one associate. ‘It is tragic. But the truth is that we don’t know how long she will be around for.
‘She looks like she’s at death’s door.’
So, what has triggered Price’s alarming transformation?
A few months ago, Price – once worth some £40million thanks to an empire built on modelling, tell-all memoirs and media appearances – told her online followers on Snapchat that she had been admitted to hospital for dramatic and unexplained weight loss.
Since then she appears to have lost more weight, telling listeners in a recent episode of her podcast, The Katie Price Show, that doctors were concerned about her low blood pressure and wanted to know why, as she put it, she had become a ‘stick woman’.
‘Life was about attention, attention, attention,’ Katie says. ‘She craved it. I remember when we were in America she’d get the papers, asking: ‘Am I in this one? Get this one and get that one.’
But for all her seeming transparency on the issue, Price is actually rather vague about potential causes. In the past she has admitted to using drugs, including repeated cocaine binges. She has, however, denied using weight-loss injections.
In place of hard specifics, Price continues to regale her online followers with colourful insights into the chaos of her life: her doomed relationships (three failed marriages and eight engagements), financial travails (two bankruptcies), struggles with her children (five) and seemingly endless surgical procedures (by my calculations, 18).
Her revelations captivate women young and old. She and best friend Kerry Katona recently completed a UK theatre tour with their show, An Evening With Katie Price And Kerry Katona.
Audiences largely consisted of giggling hen night-style groups and Loose Women fans, who lapped up the pair’s confessions and bawdy stories of their past. Of course, to some degree, Price’s mea culpas may help unburden her of painful episodes. But then the twists and turns of her life, and the riotous re-telling of them, have been her bread and butter for years – enabling Price to claw her way out of substantial debt on more than one occasion.
Declared bankrupt twice – first in 2019 over £3.2million in debts and again in March 2024 for £750,000 in unpaid taxes – she’s now back to apparent solvency.
Indeed on this week’s trip to London with Princess, there appeared to be plenty of money in the Price coffers. At the end of their excursion, the pair showed off a car boot packed full of Selfridges yellow shopping bags. Her new neighbours in Horsham will no doubt take note. For although she only recently moved into a rental barn conversion there – having been forced to sell her Sussex family home, which had fallen into disrepair – locals are said to be concerned by the piles of rubbish gathering outside.
Aerial pictures of the three-bedroom property taken this week revealed bin bags, debris and junk strewn around the outside and dumped at the rear.
Thankfully, 24 hours later, the unsightly mess appeared to have been cleaned. No one wants a repeat of what became known as the ‘Mucky Mansion’ farrago.
Online comments included that Price ‘didn’t look well’, that she must ‘need help’ – and that she was ‘such a good mum’
In the old days, Price did her business in OK! Magazine for big bucks. Now, like any other self- obsessed influencer, she uses social media to saturation.
As well as her podcast and Snapchat confessions, she also has a YouTube channel and Instagram feed – for which she is said to receive many thousands of pounds per post. She has three million followers.
Price also showcases her modelling work on OnlyFans. This content alone is said to make her £50,000 a month by posing as her alter ego Jordan in bare-breasted and lingerie shots.
She does not, I’m told, pose completely naked.
She also uses artificial intelligence technology to allow her followers to ‘talk’ to her. Ever adept at embracing new innovations, some wonder if Price is now monetising her life and body to a potentially fatal degree.
Put simply, some of those close to her worry she’s so hooked on the drama of attention that she’ll do anything to herself – even if it could kill her.
Such is her addiction to fame, friends tell me, she becomes ‘depressed’ if even just a fortnight goes by without appearing on a website, newspaper or magazine.
Even when she was in a £1,000-a-night psychiatric hospital in 2021 after admitting trying to kill herself, I’m told she called paparazzi to snap her as she took a trip to the nearby shops.
The hurtling trajectory of her life is so enthralling to many people that the BBC have made a documentary about her which will be aired at the end of the month.
Some close to Price have accused the corporation of ‘cashing in’ on her popularity – slightly hypocritically, one might argue, considering how much Price deliberately cashes in on her woes herself.
Chief of these, of course, has been her choice of men.
Her back catalogue is extensive and varied, and includes boyband singer Dane Bowers and former Manchester United footballer Dwight Yorke, father of her 23-year-old son, Harvey, who has multiple disabilities.
Most significant is, of course, Peter Andre, whom she met on I’m A Celebrity and married in 2005.
Peter Andre, whom Katie met on I’m A Celebrity in 2004 and married the following year
After their divorce in 2009, Price married cage fighter Alex Reid – a union which lasted two years.
Her next husband was Kieran Hayler – father of Katie’s youngest children Jett, 12, and Bunny, 11. They married in 2013 before getting divorced in 2021.
Price did not initially have full custody of her children with Hayler, but appears to now be living with them again.
Last year, Hayler was charged with three counts of rape and one count of sexual assault against a 13-year-old girl – alleged offences which are said to have occurred while he was married to Price.
The girl is said not to be related to either of them and Hayler denies all charges.
Price then dated former Married At First Sight star JJ Slater but split from him this month.
While friends tell me she ‘craves sexual attention’, many believe the reason for this is dark and complex.
In February 2017 she appeared on ITV’s Loose Women and said that she was sexually assaulted at the age of seven – an incident that influenced her decision to become a glamour model. She told the panel that being a victim ‘led to me dressing provocatively’. Although she’s never detailed what happened, or who her attacker was, she has said that her choice to be a model was a way of gaining control over the trauma.
As she put it: ‘You can look at me, but not touch me’.
Price has also disclosed that she has been raped more than once in her life.
A friend says: ‘Sadly, the way she sees love and attention is all mixed up with her being sexual.
Every inch of the 47-year-old former glamour model is emaciated – except for her famous, surgically-enhanced bust
‘She’s tried working on her issues and has opened up to professionals in the past, but it hasn’t really helped because ultimately she doesn’t want to help herself. Katie doesn’t want to understand why she is the way she is and try to change it.’
The friend adds: ‘There’s also the fact that people around her enable her behaviour. It doesn’t have to be who she is, but people make excuses for her.’
Friends also suggest that she ‘loves drama’ and ‘entirely feeds off a row’.
My own experiences with Price have been volatile, usually ending in an outburst on her part.
For example, in the summer of 2009 – months after her split from husband Andre – she screamed at me on an easyJet flight to Malaga, where she was travelling with her then-new boyfriend Alex Reid.
She was so loud, she made the little boy sitting next to me cry.
Shortly afterwards, at baggage reclaim, she apologised and broke down in tears at how devastated she felt after her split from Andre.
‘My life will never be as good again,’ she told me.
Andre – now married to Emily MacDonagh, a doctor, with whom he has three more children – keeps his distance from Price.
Friends point to their split as the root cause of Price’s frailty today, exacerbated by their children, Princess and Junior, choosing to live with their father.
They have gone on to forge careers and followings of their own, particularly Princess, who had her own ITV2 show, which Katie has struggled with.
As one source puts it: ‘Katie wants all the attention to be on her.
‘Luckily, Princess and Junior have Pete and Emily who have always kept them grounded and supported them. They encourage them and are so proud of them both.’
For her part, Princess appears to be doing her best to resume relations with her mother and, I’m told, has tried to help her care for her younger siblings.
But it remains to be seen whether Princess can break her mother’s habit of a lifetime – and convince her to care for herself.
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