Price - Love, Lipstick and Lies

The last three years of Katie Prices life have been as eventful as ever.

From the highly publicised divorce from Alex Reid, the dizzy romance and splits from Leandro Penna and a whirlwind marriage and surprise pregnancy with Kieran Hayler, Katie has been through a lot of changes. And thats just her love life.

Katie has also dealt with increasingly bitter disputes with first husband Peter Andre and her former manager, as well as public spats with comedian Frankie Boyle, who made offensive comments about her son Harvey, and Kelly Brook, over her dalliance with Danny Cipriani.

Despite her personal life being played out in the public arena, Katie remains true to her heart by always speaking her mind and living life to the full. This instalment of Katies roller-coaster life provides intimate access to her side of all the stories with her own special brand of humour, compassion and total honesty.

Katie Price is one of the UKs top celebrities. She was formerly the glamour model Jordan and is now a bestselling author and successful business woman. Katie is a Patron of Vision Charity and currently lives in Sussex with her four children and her husband Kieran Hayler.

Non-Fiction

Being Jordan

Jordan: A Whole New World

Jordan: Pushed to the Limit

Standing Out

You Only Live Once

Fiction

Angel

Angel Uncovered

Crystal

Hes the One

In the Name of Love

Santa Baby

Sapphire

The Come-back Girl

Paradise

I cant believe that were on the fifth instalment of my autobiography. As usual with me, the three years since my last book, You Only Live Once, have been a roller-coaster ride. Theres always drama with a capital D in my life. Always.

Now Im older, wiser, with two marriages behind me and on to marriage number three. They say third time lucky, dont they? And Im keeping everything crossed that three is a magic number. But I have such a good feeling about my husband Kieran. Ive kissed a lot of frogs. Heres hoping that hes my prince. It certainly feels as if he is.

Ive always said I am who I am. It doesnt matter what anyone says to me, no one can manufacture me, no one can change who I am. Im not like those celebrities who put on an act of having a perfect life, and never put a foot wrong. Im not polished. Im human and flawed. Ive got character and personality. Im like Marmite: you either love me or loathe me. Frankie Boyle joked: Ah, Katie Price. A bit of a Marmite figure. Half the country hates her, and the other half thinks she belongs on the end of a knife. Not that I care what the haters think. I cant be any different from who I am. I dont put on an act for the cameras and the press. There isnt the celebrity Katie Price and the other Katie Price. I am always me.

Whatever anyone says about me, whatever criticisms they throw at me, Im proud of what I have achieved. Top of the list: my children. They make everything worthwhile, and everything I do, I do it for them. Im like a proud lioness and they are my cubs. I will always protect and defend them. They are my life.

Im also proud of what Ive achieved in my career. I started as a glamour model and Page 3 girl at the age of seventeen, and from there Ive gone on to have my own TV series, sell over three and a half million copies of my autobiographies, novels and childrens books, Ive got my own business empire with KP Equestrian, KP Rocks, my perfumes, lingerie, swimwear, range of hair products and Im always thinking of more! Im financially secure; I can support my family and give them a brilliant life-style. Im living proof that you can make something of yourself if you try hard enough.

So here goes the next instalment.

There is only one word to describe my second marriage, to Alex Reid, and thats rebound. Im aware it sounds harsh but its true. I never should have rushed into marrying him. We all make mistakes and that was one big one However, in my own defence, I met Alex in July 2009, at the absolute worst time of my life. I needed someone to protect me and Alex seemed to fit the bill. If Im honest, it could have been any man, within reason, who was kind, attractive, and looked strong enough to protect me. I was desperate for some kind of security because my world had just fallen apart.

Earlier that year, in May, Peter Andre, my then husband, had walked out on me just a month after Id suffered a miscarriage. I was still reeling from the devastating loss of our baby. I knew that our marriage had been on the rocks for a while, but I never thought he would leave me. I was heartbroken.

When I met Pete on Im a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! in 2004, I fell head over heels in love with him and believed he felt the same about me. Celebrities often go on that kind of show and put on an act; some of them might fake a romance to get the viewers interested in them. I can honestly say that didnt happen with Pete and me. What we had was real certainly as far as I was concerned. I thought I had found the one, the man who completed me, the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Fast-forward five years and wed had two children together, first Junior and then Princess, and along with my son Harvey, I thought we had a secure, happy family, something which I have always wanted. But that happy family was destroyed when Pete walked out, telling me it was over in a phone call. To this day he has never properly spoken to me about why he left so I could never get any closure on our marriage, though he would often drop hints in the magazine interviews he subsequently gave that there was a dark secret behind our divorce. There was no dark secret. I think he was swayed into leaving me.

From the moment he left in May 2009 (less than two months after I had given my then manager Claire Powell notice that I did not want her to continue acting for me), I was hounded by the press. The tabloids and magazines wrote terrible stories about me, while Pete was held up as some kind of saint, the perfect father, and a victim. I was back to being called Jordan and blamed for the break up of our marriage. There seemed to be no sympathy for me at all. Someone even came up with the Team Pete/Team Katie idea, and some so-called celebs were quoted as saying that they were on Team Pete. No one seemed to realise that this wasnt about taking sides. It wasnt a game. It was about a family that had broken up, and at the heart of it were our children.

As far as I know, never once, when all the lies were printed about me, did Pete ever defend me and say, Hang on. These stories arent true! I dont want a bad word said against the mother of my children. We may have had our differences but shes a good mum. Instead it felt to me as if he was building up his own career and image by trashing mine. This may sound like sour grapes but it is true. Within a matter of weeks Pete was promoting his new album. Ive always wondered how he would have promoted it if we hadnt split up, especially given the lyrics of some of the songs on it, which were published in various magazines with the suggestion that they were about me.

Worse than any of that, I also had to face up to a new life where I wouldnt have Princess and Junior living with me all the time because they would be spending time with their father. I missed them so badly when they were away, it was like a physical pain. They were both so little. My babies. Princess was only one and a half and Junior was four. They needed to be with their mum. I had felt under pressure to agree to joint custody, even though I thought the children should spend most of their time with me. Pete had walked out, and yet it felt as if I was the one being punished.