^ cont
Did she embarrass her family with her career choice and indiscretions? "All the time. Everyone feels embarrassed. They don't know what's going to come out of my mouth next." Although her parents were strict, they were not really in a position to disapprove of her career choice. Her grandmother had worked as a topless mermaid. "And if it was good enough for my nan, it was good enough for me."
"I was dead set against Kate doing topless modelling from day one," Dan says. "I was like, why you? I can't buy that paper no more. It was a bit weird. I play football on Saturday and in the changing rooms, all the banter..." How did he cope when his mates made laddish remarks about his sister's body? "My normal response is, 'Yeah, they're not bad, and they feel all right, too.' Then they're like, 'What!' And that's the end of the conversation."
Life divides neatly in two for Price - pre-jungle and post-jungle. In 2004, she went on the reality show I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! as Jordan and came out as Katie. While many celebrities lose their dignity in the jungle, she found hers. She came across as vulnerable, funny, needy and very human. She fell in love with the Australian singer Peter Andre. He was a pop star in terminal decline, she was a Page 3 girl approaching the end of her shelf life. Both were in need of reinvention. While she was in the jungle, her mother approached Andre's management team and asked if they would take on Price. They agreed, so long as they could remould her. "I believed what I had read in the papers, and when I met her she was totally different," Powell says. "I thought if she continued doing glam, by the time she was 30 there'd be lots of other people around, and that she could do a lot more than she was doing. I think Katie thought I was trying to kill off Jordan at the beginning. She thought, my God, this girl is trying to ruin everything I have built up over all this time, so that's why we clashed a bit."
Was she trying to kill her? "No, I wasn't trying to kill off Jordan because she's made an awful lot of money and Katie is Jordan. All I was trying to show her was, once you have a team around you that you can trust and only want to take their percentage to make you different and bigger, how much bigger and better you will be, and how much money you will earn." Powell believed that, with the right image, Price could sell anything. "For the first six months it was difficult, because I'd say don't put so much make-up on. When we first started managing Kate, she'd have three sets of eyelashes on and two lots of fake tan. She would go and do a red carpet, and she'd want to have a drink so she'd have that confidence. She would then want to be made up because she could hide behind it, and it would give her more confidence."
Price was a strange mix of self-belief and uncertainty, Powell says. "She was very confident in front of the camera - she could stand there and pose in front of a thousand people and not be nervous. But if she was going down a red carpet fully clothed, she'd feel very nervous."
"I think that's a nice thing," Price says. "If people are really confident, it's unattractive."
Out went Jordan, in came Katie, the homely girl's girl. Instead of dodgy footballers, drunken escapades and explicit revelations, there was Andre, marriage and endorsements galore. The fact is, she says, even though she gave the impression she was promiscuous, she never was. She didn't sleep with many men, it's just that she told us all there was to tell about the few she did sleep with.
When I ask about her boyfriends, she says she won't go into details. "I'm not disrespecting Pete. If people want to know about that, they can read my book." Classic Price.
When she says "book", she means books. She asked for a £1m advance for her first memoir, Being Jordan, and was turned down. She ended up signing a deal with small independent publisher John Blake for £10,000. Being Jordan sold more than one million copies. The latest memoir, the third, Jordan: Pushed To The Limit, was as we went to press number three in the hardback charts. If you look for a ghostwriting credit on the cover or inside jacket of her novels, you won't find it. Only when you get to the fine print is there an acknowledgement that copyright is jointly owned by Katie Price and Rebecca Farnworth. She says she is closely involved in her novels. "I talk in a tape and say the stories that I want. Rebecca then writes each chapter. It comes back, and I read it through."
Powell clarifies. "Then Kate re-sits down with it and says, I want it to be this or that, or more powerful, and they just write it into book words."
Why does she think her products are more popular than, say, Victoria Beckham's? "Probably because I work and do the promotion. I'm not up my **** and I've not got the attitude to say anything I do is going to go to number one. It does go to number one, but I do put my time, effort and promotion into it."
A couple of days later we meet at the lingerie shoot for her Katie Price underwear. In an echo of the Dove campaign, she has invited larger female fans from her website to join her in the photo shoot for the range that starts at DD. She is wearing loose tracksuit bottoms, pink and purple curlers in her £2,000 hair extensions, and looks like something straight out of a Victoria Wood sketch. Dan is here snapping away for the website, while little sister Sophie offers her support.
Price's feet are an unlikely shade of brown. Is that colour real, I ask. She laughs. "What is my persona? Real or fake? There's your answer. If you got something like that from the sun, you'd be in trouble."
I talk to one of the women who have been chosen to model alongside her - it turns out Angie is a cousin of a cousin of Andre's and doubles up as Price's beautician. As we chat, I notice Partridge standing by my side. She is whispering urgently. "Simon, I'm sorry, Katie would prefer you not to talk to the girls." Price thinks the girls are nervous.
A few minutes later, a woman from George at Asda, which sells the underwear, introduces herself. I start to talk to her about why Price and George at Asda suit each other. From the other side of the room, somewhere underneath a hairdryer, Price is shouting at me. "Simon, her name's not Katie Price. This is supposed to be about me."
I walk over to her, assuming she is joking. But she isn't.
"Are you objecting to the fact that I'm talking to them or that it's about you?"
"Because the deal is about me, not other people, and it's not fair to put them in that position. Unless you cover it with my management. Your job is to interview me, not other people. That is the job description. Am I right or wrong?"
I tell her that she's right in a way and wrong in a way, but it's good to see her bossy side.
"I don't think it's bossy. It's called sticking to what you're supposed to be doing. There's a difference. What star sign are you?"
"Capricorn."
"Ah, no wonder. My Dad's a Capricorn, and my brother. I bet you're really stubborn, aren't you? I'm a Gemini, there are two of me, so I can be nice, but I can be naughty in a minute."
"Do you have a stubborn streak?"
"I wouldn't say stubborn. I just know what I want, and if I want it, I'll make sure I get it."
Next time I see her she has transformed herself into Jessica Rabbit - charcoal-grey bra and knickers, diamond stilettos, shocking pink nails, dazzling green-hazel eyes. The shoot is well- intentioned, but seems almost cruel - a couple of the less photogenic women are nervous and freeze in the glare of the flashlights.
Powell is talking about Sophie Price's burgeoning career and explaining why she won't be doing topless. "Page 3 has changed an awful lot over the past eight to 10 years. There's nothing wrong with topless, and I'm all for women who are liberated. But you can do glamour and be sexy without actually showing your boobs. Once you've gone topless, everyone sees you as a topless model."
Which is what makes the transformation of Katie Price all the more amazing. The most fascinating thing about her metamorphosis is that women and girls now form the bulk of her fan base. Price knows that in the past she has been anything but popular with women. "When you're a Page 3 girl getting your t*ts out, you're just aimed at men so women do find you a threat." Nowadays, she thinks women find it easy to relate to her - the kids, Harvey's disability, the hard-luck stories with previous men, the honesty.
Dan tells me that the Katie Price website is now more popular than the Jordan website. Does he ever get confused between the two? "No. The difference between the two sites is the Jordan has a forum and 24-hour chat room. We have to monitor it. The Katie Price site doesn't have a forum or chat room, so it's safe for children to go to - no predators out there." Will Jordan become history at some point? "Well, I don't think so - Katie signs everything Jordan." Why? "She won't let it go because it got her where she is."
When Powell first met Price, she asked what her ambitions were. Price said she wanted to sing. "I said men will not go out and buy albums. If you want to have a music career, you've got to latch on to women." Over time, "Katie Price" has been nurtured. "The message now is that it's OK to like Katie, it's OK for your daughter to be like Katie. She was doing sexy today, but OK sexy, nothing harmful, threatening," Powell says.
In many ways, the reality show leaves her more exposed than Jordan's undressing ever did. When she visits the doctor for a pregnancy check-up, we find out at the same time as her that the baby is dead inside her. When Andre loses his rag and says she's the moodiest, most difficult woman in the world, we hear his rant uncensored. Did she not think of turning off the cameras when she heard about her miscarriage? She shakes her head. "Nicola was filming it, and she said, 'Do I turn it off?' I said just keep it rolling. It's real." Could she imagine her and Andre splitting up on TV? "Well we're not going to split up." But the implication is that if they did, of course the cameras would be there. Their relationship began in front of the cameras and has evolved in front of the cameras. I wonder if they ever feel they are in The Truman Show; that they wouldn't exist if the cameras were not there? "Not at all." She gives me a look, as if to say that's bonkers.
What if the kids didn't want to be on the show? "They wouldn't be on it." Would she keep doing it? "That's me, yeah. But I don't know why they wouldn't want to be on it. The way I look at it is, you know when people buy a video camera, go on holiday, they're filming themselves, and they've got the memory there for ever. How much better is it having a camera following you around, getting everything? You couldn't even buy that. It's brilliant. We've got all them tapes from the moment they're born. I wish I had tapes of me growing up from the day I was born. I think it's brilliant".
She has a knack of working herself into a lather out of nothing. At times, random thoughts seem to hit her and she flies into a fury. "I can't stand people, celebrities or pop bands posing with disabled kids to try to get a hit record," she says apropos of nothing. "That really ****ing pisses me off. Try and have a kid yourself with disabilities, then you wouldn't be posing around with kids."
But you often pose with Harvey? "He's my son, and I may pose with him, but I also talk about what it's like to be a mum with a disabled child, and believe it or not I get so many emails from people who say it helps them and they ask how they get equipment, things like that. I'm in control when I do it with Harvey."
Control is such an important word for her. Price is very controlling about her image. The one area over which she doesn't have control is the reality show. Powell (who appears regularly in the programme) and her partner own the production company and do not allow Price and Andre to see the show before it goes out. I ask Powell if Price and Andre are ever shocked by what they see? "Yeah, sometimes, they're like, 'Jesus, we really went for it then.' But it's a reality show, and if it was a fluff piece it wouldn't still be on TV." In the last series, we saw Price trying to crack America - Powell apologises for waking her early in the morning, but says that eventually she will thank her because it will make her globally famous. Price replies that she doesn't want to be famous, she wants to be a billionaire.
Tell me about money, I say. "I don't ever discuss money. It's a really unattractive thing to do." But you did say you wanted to be a billionaire? "Well, you've got to have ambitions, haven't you? I don't think even Paul McCartney has got a billion, so there you go."
It's incredible what she's made of herself and for herself. Whereas fellow OK! cover girls Kerry Katona and Jodie Marsh come across as victims, Price seems to transcend her misfortunes. When Dwight Yorke leaves her with a disabled baby, she appears strong; when she gets cancer, she fights it; when she miscarries, she turns it into poignant television. Does she consider herself lucky or unlucky? "Both. I'm both. Yeah, both. Personal life, always **** happens. Career-wise, always an up. I love it."
Price is living proof of how you can conquer the world with a pretty face, a decent surgeon, determination, tough management and chutzpah. I had assumed she simply aspires to fame, but that is wrong. She aspires to success - any success - and that success is best measured in money. No wonder she has become a role model. Price is a figure of hope for many people - if Katie can do it, without any great talent, so can we. There are so many things left to endorse, she says, so many ways of making money - not least from her newly removed implants. She recently announced she was going to put them on eBay for £1m. "They're in my safe at home at the moment." And she really thinks she'll get £1m for them? "Yes, I do. Yes. I might actually put them on for a bit more, because I want £1m in my bank account, and I want to give some money to charity. I'll be greedy this time."
Photos that accompany it: I can't believe how different she looks

Photographer-David Bailey
scanned by me from The Guardian