SARAH VINE: Anyone with half a heart can see Katie deserves our sympathy, not our opprobrium

Here’s something I never thought I would say: I feel sorry for Katie Price. The former glamour model was arrested at Heathrow airport last week as she returned to the UK from Turkey, having just undergone her sixth facelift.

Something about her beaten-up, heavily bandaged face, the plumped-up lips and bird-like frame with its two uncomfortable-looking, balloon-like breasts just seemed so utterly tragic, so sad. She was, as she always does, putting on a brave front. But she’s clearly a broken soul.

I realise this may not be a popular opinion. Many people, if they care at all about her, take the view that her downfall – her two bankruptcies, the first in 2019 and again this March (this arrest comes after she failed to attend a hearing relating to her £760,000 HMRC debt) are her own fault, the result of disorganisation, greed, moral degeneracy and general profligacy.

Her chaotic love affairs, her five children by three fathers, her multiple driving offences, her grubby home life… she is, many will say, the architect of her own misery and deserves everything she gets.

I don’t agree. Sure, she’s made mistakes, and sure, she’s flaunted the rules and tried to play the system. Granted, she is vulgar and generally crass. But underneath it all is someone who deserves our sympathy, not our opprobrium. She needs help, not punishment.

Anyone with half a heart can see she is not well. As someone who remembers her when she burst on to the scene in the late 1990s, as her alter ego Jordan, I think she’s always been… well, a bit extra.

Her lack of physical or personal boundaries always stood out. There was a sense that nothing was off limits, providing the price was right. And for a long time it was. She made millions flogging her body, her books, her personal life. She laid herself bare at every opportunity, monetised every inch of herself. And yet no one – certainly not Price herself – ever stopped to think: why?

To me it’s clear, a story as old as life itself. A Hogarthian tale of desperation and corruption, a working-class girl, abandoned by her father, abused by men, with limited life choices, looking for fame, fortune and a better future in all the wrong places.

If it is true, as she claims, that she was raped in a park aged seven, it doesn’t take a genius to see how that would have destroyed her self-esteem. Abused children always feel worthless, while at the same time desperate for validation. They crave love, but don’t know how to hold on to it.

Price’s need to find validation and meaning through her multiple marriages and children exemplifies this. She destroyed what was probably her best chance at long-term stability and happiness, with the singer and TV personality Peter Andre, also the father of her two children, Princess and Junior.

Andre was everything she craved and probably needed: stable, a responsible father, a savvy businessman – but ultimately, she left him for a bad boy, cage fighter Alex Reid, which ended in bitterness and tears. As did her subsequent marriage, to stripper Kieran Hayler, the father of her two youngest children.

In all these relationships, Price was clearly seeking something real, something long-lasting, a fairytale fantasy of romance and everlasting love. But when you are as damaged as she is, it’s hard to resist that demon on the shoulder.

Her stated desire to have more children is part of that. Children represent a second chance, a clean slate – in her eyes, at least. Of course, any sane person looking at her situation would see that the last thing she needs is another mouth to feed. But for her, having a child represents another roll of the dice. It’s selfish and stupid – but that’s how damaged she is.

As for the addiction to plastic surgery, that is clearly a very costly and extremely dangerous form of self-harm. She seeks refuge in these surgeries. They are very obviously a way of her running away from herself and her mistakes, once again her attempt to make a fresh start by altering the way she looks.

So yes, she’s a car crash of a woman, her own worst enemy, the architect of her own downfall. But still, I feel sorry for her. Because after all, the only person she’s really hurting is herself.

For all the sass and the attitude, she is a sad, lonely and ultimately tragic figure whose only real source of income – her appearance – is slipping away from her.

But she does have one success story: her eldest son Harvey, who is disabled. The way she has cared for him and stood up for him in the face of vile online trolls is testament to her strength of character.

I hope for his sake that the courts take that into consideration when deciding her fate. And I hope she gets the help she needs and that one day she will learn to love herself for who she is and not what she thinks people want her to be.

As the Government prepares to impose VAT on school fees, driving thousands of children into the overcrowded state sector, how long before Rachel Reeves turns her attention to other rich seams of revenue and targets other VAT-exempt services, such as private healthcare? 

Thanks to long NHS waiting lists, more people than ever before are turning to the private sector. Will that now be deemed a bourgeois ‘luxury’ by Comrade Reeves, and fleeced accordingly? 

The women fighting a losing battle

Athlete Caster Semenya, who has the intersex condition 5-alpha-Reductase 2 deficiency (5ARD), resulting in the underdevelopment of male genitalia, is adamant that ‘my internal testicles don’t make me any less of a woman’. 

I’m afraid that is just not true, since internal or otherwise, those testicles still produce testosterone in the male range, with all the physical advantages inherent.

Boxer Imane Khelif has just won gold in the women’s welterweight in Paris, obliterating opponents at every stage

That is why the boxer Imane Khelif, who has a similar condition and is also in possession of a Y chromosome, has just won gold in the women’s welterweight in Paris, obliterating opponents at every stage. 

No one is disputing that both these individuals – along with a third, the Taiwanese featherweight Lin Yu-ting – identify as women. The question is whether it is fair for them to compete against other women who don’t have their advantages, and could never attain their levels of strength, no matter how hard they trained. 

The only way they could possibly do so would be through doping – ie flooding their bodies with male hormones. And that, of course, would be cheating.

Gymnastics is without a doubt my favourite Olympic sport. Women like Simone Biles and Rebeca Andrade seem to defy all laws of nature while displaying the utmost grace. But even more astonishing is their dedication to appearance. Shiny long talons, sky-high hair, elaborate make-up and jewellery. It’s a sprung floor, not a dancefloor, ladies!

Women like Simone Biles and Rebeca Andrade seem to defy all laws of nature while displaying the utmost grace, writes Sarah Vine

I thought nothing could top the French pole-vaulter whose protruding crotch cost him his Olympic dream, but then along came Australian breakdancer ‘Raygun’, whose hilariously so-bad-it-was-good routine made Eddie ‘the Eagle’ Edwards look like a professional. It has to be a prank, surely?

The admirable speed and efficiency with which those involved in the far-Right rioting that exploded across Britain in the wake of the Southport stabbings have been dealt with by the courts shows that, when this country wants to, it can still get its act together. 

But it also slightly begs the question: why is the individual accused in the murders, Axel Rudakubana, not due to stand trial until January next year? Surely the very least the grieving families deserve is the same swift justice as the victims of last week’s riots. 

Fat chance of the BBC getting their £200,000 back from Huw Edwards. The man will never work again.