Love, Lipstick and Lies (18 page)

I also had to sue a couple of magazines for falsely claiming that they had interviewed me. One magazine did this and lifted an interview that I had given to another journalist some time before – but added in their own questions, which made it look as if I thought Pete and I would get back together. The next week they published an interview by Pete hitting back at me! Stuff that, I thought, and they had to pay damages for making this up.

I know I upset Richard Desmond who owns Northern & Shell when I sued
OK!
magazine for claiming to have an exclusive interview with me and publishing a front-page
picture of me, Pete and the kids under the headline ‘Katie and Peter: Spending time together at Christmas’. The problem was Pete had done a Christmas shoot with the kids and I had been superimposed on to it! Pete and I were
not
spending time together at Christmas as I then had to explain to a very upset Junior, who had seen the magazine. Richard probably felt I was disloyal as he had paid me good money to appear in the magazine before, but I felt I had no choice given the trouble this coverage had caused.

There was one particular journalist from the
Daily Star
, Gemma Wheatley, who had written a number of upsetting articles about me. Between 2010 and 2011 I had complained to the Press Complaints Commission about seventeen
Daily Star
articles, which contained appalling and false allegations about me. At about that time the publishers of the
Daily Star
pulled out of the PCC! (Maybe they could not face any more of my complaints.) My legal team changed tack and eventually a settlement was reached, with the
Daily Star
admitting the most serious allegations were false. Of the seventeen articles I originally took to the PCC, eleven were written by Gemma Wheatley.

Ironically, when I had been on holiday in Egypt with Alex in 2010, I had rescued her from a difficult situation. We had visited a water park and been pursued by journalists and paps. We told security at the park, who rounded them up and held them in a room and were threatening to lock them away in a police cell. When
Gemma saw me she begged me to help her get out, and so, being a big softie, I said to the security guards, ‘It’s okay, let them all go.’ Well, I regret that act of kindness now.

As if her string of untrue stories about me were not shocking enough, I then found out that Wheatley left the
Daily Star
and was taken on by Claire Powell and Can Associates to work closely with Pete as his PA. What I can’t understand is why, if someone was writing all these horrible stories about the mother of your children, you would even want to associate with them, never mind have them as your PA! This was the journalist who had written the ‘bizarre’ bruises story. She had also claimed that I wanted a child to save my flagging career; that my book
Paradise
had been put straight into the bargain bins on the day it hit the shops; that during a web-chat with fans I had refused to answer any questions that were not about my products; that I had a ‘drunken night’ with Amir Khan … Believe me, if it had been the other way round and someone had said bad things about Pete that I knew weren’t true, I would have stuck up for him. I wouldn’t have worked with them, that’s for sure.

* * *

So I was prepared to get legal with the press. But that wasn’t all … since the end of my first marriage, I had suspected that my former management company had been agitating the press against me. I felt that they had decided that the best way to build up Pete was
to knock me down. Can Associates was run by Claire Powell and her then partner, Neville Hendricks.

For five years Claire, Neville and their assistant Nicola Partridge had been a huge part of my life. I’d thought that they were my friends, I had trusted them and confided in them. And overnight they cut off all contact with me. Not once did any of them check that I was okay after Pete walked out. I felt completely lost. My husband had left me, I had no management, the press were printing all kinds of lies about me. I was portrayed as the bad person while Pete was painted as the perfect dad. It really affected my reputation, and my career. I started to feel such anger towards Claire Powell, and it was hard not to be disappointed in Pete as well for the way he never once stood up for me. People might say, why should he? But for me it’s simple. I am the mother of his children. I admit I have my faults but being a bad mother is not one of them. And I hated the way he seemed to be building up his career by playing himself against me.

I have since had a reconciliation with Neville and Nicola. We got some stuff off our chests and it was quite emotional for me. Neville is currently fighting ITV2 because they terminated his company’s contract to film Pete’s reality show after Neville’s personal relationship with Claire ended. I know Neville has been deeply shocked by what he has discovered since commencing that litigation, and he has had to dig deep and fight hard.

In late 2011 I was shown information by my lawyers
that devastated me but also made me realise that my feelings about what Claire had been doing were not simply me being paranoid. I don’t want to say too much about this as I am currently involved in litigation against Claire, Pete, Jamelah Asmar and Can Associates – or, to put it another way, my ex-manager, my ex-husband, my ex-best friend and my ex-management company. Oh, and the cherry on top is that my ex-husband is being represented by my ex-lawyers! This litigation is a deeply unpleasant experience for me. Naturally sections of the press have sought to suggest that I have taken these proceedings out of spite or from some sort of desire to attack Pete. Nothing could be further from the truth – I simply felt I had no choice given what I had discovered. The defendants all deny my claims.

In a nutshell, my ex-best friend Jamelah swore an affidavit that contained personal information about me. I will not go into details other than to say that one piece of information in that affidavit is the name of the man who raped me and who, in September 2009, I made it clear to the world I was not going to name. This affidavit was sworn on 18 September 2009.

On 14 September 2009 Pete had denied knowing anything about this rape or having discussed it with me, in his
new!
magazine column. He repeated this claim in an
OK!
magazine interview the same week. In his defence to my claim, his position is that we had discussed it but that I’d told him I had been too drunk at the time of the attack to remember what happened. Pete’s denials of any knowledge
of the matter in 2009 had led to me being attacked by the press over and over again.

This affidavit was prepared for legal proceedings, according to the defendants. I won’t express a view on that but it is admitted that Jamelah then met with the
News of the World
and that this meeting was arranged by Claire Powell. She also arranged for Michelle Clack to do an interview, “setting the record straight”, with the same paper. There is so much more to this case but I will leave it there.

What is for certain is that I am not the first client Claire has fallen out with after they have left her. She had to apologise to the actress Martine McCutcheon, another of her former clients, for comments made about her.

I had always hoped that Pete and I could meet and talk about why our marriage ended, get some closure, but that’s never happened and I don’t think it ever will. The way he behaved after we split proved to me that I could never trust him again. Ever. It’s sad because I think he chose to believe the lies other people around him were telling about me. Over the years there have been some crazy stories in the press saying that I wanted to get back with him. Trust me, I never did. Even before my legal case against him and Can Associates I felt that we could never be friends, which is just horrible for the kids.

October 2011. A date I look back on and think: What the hell was I doing? I had a brief, intense relationship with a certain rugby player that completely screwed me up. I behaved in a way that just wasn’t like me at all. I think it stemmed from the events of the last couple of years catching up with me. I was still recovering from what had happened in my marriage to Alex and how shocked and disturbed I had been by his behaviour. The emotional scars from that time still ran deep. And I had just found out what my ex-management, husband and friends had been up to. I felt besieged from every side. I was vulnerable. I wanted reassurance. I wanted, needed, to be loved. It was just a pity then that the next man I got involved with shattered my already fragile self-esteem. Danny Cipriani. How I wish I had never met him.

I’m friends with the boxer David Haye, and one night early in October he texted me to say that Danny wanted to get in touch with me and could I give him the PIN for my BlackBerry so we could message each other? I had met Danny before at The Worx, when I was on a shoot, and he’d invited me to some charity event. I’d thought he was fit, but he was with Kelly Brook at the time so nothing was going to happen. I remember he had a cute pug puppy with him, little realising that next time I saw that puppy it would be in Danny’s bedroom …

I suppose I was curious to find out more about him, so I gave David my PIN to pass on to him. To my surprise Danny got in touch straight away. Instantly we seemed to hit it off and BBM-ed each other non-stop. It was good not having to use Google Translate to have a conversation, I can tell you! Danny was very full on and seemed to really like me, paying me lots of compliments. This makes a change, I thought, as I’d just broken up with Leo and was bitterly disappointed by the way our relationship had turned out. Here was a man who sounded like fun, who I could actually have a laugh with. We got on so well that I arranged to meet Danny the following evening. Usually I never meet men I don’t know well while on my own, but I thought, What have I got to lose? A lot more than I’d bargained for, as it turned out …

We arranged that I would pick him up but Danny had seemed paranoid about being spotted out with me when we fixed the meeting and I had said, ‘Don’t worry, I don’t
want to be seen either as I’ve just split with Leo.’ At first we were both shy with each other when he got into the car, but we soon started talking. It was a low-key date. My friends Gary and Phil had said I could spend the evening at their flat as we didn’t want to be seen eating out together at a restaurant. We decided to get a takeaway curry and strolled down the road to get one. Plus point to Danny, he actually paid. We were both casually dressed, I was in my jeans, and a little blue top and sandals. OMG, I thought, he is gorgeous! That night we went no further than kissing … but I have to say that there was chemistry between us and I was strongly attracted to him.

I knew I should be wary, though. He was only twenty-two and had a terrible reputation as a womaniser. In contrast to Leo’s handsome features, Danny had bad-boy rugged looks. He had amazing thighs – and I love a good pair of thighs! I should have been able to resist him, but I just couldn’t. From the moment we met … in fact even before we met, in his texts … Danny said everything he could to make me feel that he was really into me. It seemed like the moment I was reading one message, he was already sending me the next. He completely turned my head, giving me all the talk, making me feel really special. I thought, Wow, he’s so fit, he’s English and he’s got his own profession. He won’t be a ponce,
and
he knows the media industry so no problems there. This could work! I had been so used to lack of communication with Leo that it was refreshing and exciting to have a bit
of banter with someone who actually spoke the same language. And having a man pay me so much attention made me feel much better about myself. It was like medicine to me after everything I had been through. I craved his adoration. Looking back, I wasn’t thinking clearly at all.

We would meet at his friend Rory’s house where Danny was staying while he was in London. I did think it was strange that he didn’t have his own place, but he was playing for an Australian team at the time and said that he’d got rid of his flat and sold his car. At the beginning I would see him in the evenings and stay over. In the mornings he would have training and I would drop him off there and sometimes stay and watch, then we’d go for lunch. He would tell me that he wanted to see me all the time, that he didn’t know what it was about me but he couldn’t get me out of his head. Because of the way he made me feel I let my barriers down straight away. He was the first guy I had done that with since Dane Bowers. I wish I’d known then that he would end up breaking me, just as Dane had. If I’d had any suspicion of that, I’d have run a mile.

Really early on Danny told me that he loved me and I ended up saying it back. I knew it wasn’t love; it was lust. I just said it because it seemed romantic to go along with him. He definitely led me to believe that we were a couple. I absolutely fell for Danny and he seemed to have fallen for me too. I know it sounds mad as I write this down, it was so soon after me splitting with Leo
and I had wanted my freedom then, but that’s what happened.

However, Danny didn’t want to be seen anywhere out with me in public. He made the excuse that we should wait at least six months before we came out as a couple, so that we really knew each other and would be strong enough to deal with whatever the press said about us. And he claimed it was important for his rugby career that we kept our relationship under wraps. I did think it was odd, but he made a convincing case. He also told me that he had spoken to his mum about me, and she had said that she was looking forward to meeting me, so that all sounded as if he took our relationship seriously.

When a picture of us together appeared in the press – I think it was after I’d spent the night at his place in London – Danny told me that his manager had accused me of setting it up, which of course I didn’t! I immediately rang her up and put her straight. Danny blamed the story getting out on my distinctive Range Rover. ‘It’s your fucking pink car! Don’t come up and see me in that,’ he told me, sounding pissed off. And rather than thinking, Hang on, what’s the big deal? Why won’t you be seen with me? I ended up borrowing my friend Jane’s car, so I wouldn’t be spotted.