Marina Hyde: Lost in showbiz
Hell hath no fury like Jordan scorned
There are myriad rules for how to survive in showbiz, but perhaps the most crucial is: never start a feud with Jordan. I'm telling you, this woman is the Afghanistan of celebrities. No matter how many resources you pour into trying to subjugate her, she will always be the last one standing, while you lose dignity and good men hand-over-fist, before having to withdraw mired in some humiliating debate about your legacy/cheap boob job.
For Kerry Katona, alas, the advice comes too late.
In her always trenchant OK! magazine column this week, the former I'm A Celebrity winner appears to have absorbed news that Jordan's disabled son is unwell again, and for reasons unknown - unless she's back on the racket again - has taken the nuclear option.
"Katie and Peter Andre have had to rush Harvey to hospital again after he fell on a mirror and cut his face," begins the Iceland mum. "My God, is anyone watching this child?!"
An arch inquiry indeed, especially from someone whose most recent OK! "world exclusive" was coverlined "KERRY: I WON'T LET THE SOCIAL TAKE MY KIDS".
"It sounds to me like Harvey needs to be watched all the time," madam continues. "If anything like that happened to my girls, I'd go round the bend ... I think a live-in nurse is the way forward."
For Kerry, of course, a move into the witness protection programme is now the way forward. As Omar Little, Lost in Showbiz's most intensely beloved character from The Wire, once observed: "You come at the king, you'd better not miss."
And given Jordan's indestructible qualities - previously only identified in the Terminator genus - it's fair to say she will not be mortally wounded by the above missile. But she'll be narked. Plenty narked, and we can only expect her to raise herself off the ropes hissing, "That all you got, Kerry?"
In fact, and unusually for this column, the boxing allusion may even be relevant. That most savagely beautiful of sports has often been described as two black men beating each other up for the entertainment of a white crowd. The less charitable among us might judge that in stoking this particular fight in every issue possible, OK! magazine is attempting to confect some battle between people whose heinous crime is to be working-class mothers - and all for the delight of the middle-class post-op lobotomies who read the publication.
Unfortunately, that's a debate for a column with a soul.
Lost in Showbiz only "does" facetiousness and mass-market film comparisons, so we'll instead observe that the face-off seems to follow the recent vogue for pitting iconic villains against each other in spin-off movies. We've had Alien v Predator and Freddie v Jason, though in fairness Jordan v Kerry is the equivalent of Alien v Bungle. The bear needn't make any long-term plans.
As for the genesis of the ladies' feud ... well, like the altercations into which Jordan's Middle Eastern namesake has historically found itself dragged, the strands are too ancient and complex to unravel in any medium other than a 12,000-word essay by Martin Amis.
Annoyingly, Martin couldn't be reached yesterday afternoon, so we'll have to summarise the long-running conflict as follows: "You're an unfit mother!" "No, you're an unfit mother!" "You're an unfit mother to infinity!"
It is Jordan, of course, who will come up with a version of this final riposte, and Kerry is advised to surrender before things get even uglier. If Ms Price doesn't already have the bomb, she's definitely working on it.
guardian
