I met Kerry Katona on Atomic Kitten’s first video shoot back in the early Noughties. All three women were lovely, but Kerry had the energy and lashings of personality. She was the one who really stood out.
I’ve remained fascinated by her various trials and tribulations over the years, but also saddened.
There’s no doubt she’s a grafter and she’s had to fight for everything she has.
Like many celebrity women, she’s had dubious taste in boyfriends, attracted losers and suffered more than her fair share of heartache.
Kerry claims she’s now back on top. She’s put her two bankruptcies behind her and things are looking up.
But are they? Really?
The pandemic meant that her work – personal appearances, magazine shoots and so on dried up. She admitted in an interview this week she had to sell the £16,000 jukebox ex-husband Brian McFadden gave to her as a wedding present for just £1,900.
Over the past year she’s turned to OnlyFans, the social media platform that allows users to, among other things, sell sexually explicit content of themselves. Kerry, 41, claims it has made her a millionaire again. So much so she’s put her kids back into private school, she’s renting what she calls an “amazing home”, and to top it all off she’s splashed out on a £250,000 Lamborghini.
Why Kerry, why? As soon as she gets her hands on cash she lets it slip through her fingers. She admits she has no pension, she doesn’t invest in the stock market and she doesn’t own property.
Buying the Lambo was reckless. And it was that reckless behaviour that got her in a mess in the first place. Has she learnt nothing?
She may be cashing in on selling pictures of herself in her birthday suit now, but it isn’t exactly a sustainable income stream.
Not to be too indelicate, but what happens when things start to go south and shrivel up? It happens to all of us eventually. Will the cash keep rolling in then? I doubt it.
Instead of splashing the cash, Kerry would do well to break the habit of a lifetime and put money away for a rainy day. Otherwise she’ll be saying “see ya” to the house, car, private schools, and hello to being broke again.
