Marriage, mayhem and Mark

Take a deep breath and step inside the chaotic world of Kerry Katona

Kerry Katona is on a high from the Fabulous photo shoot. She literally threw herself into it. When I say she looked like a ballet dancer in some of the poses, she guffaws nervously and says: "Don't tell my husband that because I'm not like that in the bedroom."

Her famously controlling husband Mark Croft hadn't wanted her to do the shoot, so she rings to taunt him, saying: "This is the one of the best shoots I've ever done," and puts the phone down. Such is their push-me-pull-you relationship.

Mark with baby Heidi

Kerry, 28, claims Mark, 37, is her soulmate, but others think he is only there to spend her money. Hundreds of thousands of it have certainly disappeared, and she's now bankrupt.

In her new MTV series we see their relationship combust. Mark complains that Kerry's new medication for her bipolar disorder has made her snappy. Then we see her snap and sob that she wants a divorce. A few days after throwing him out, he came back. It's just part of the living soap opera that has mesmerised the nation.

She is huddled beside me in a white towelling robe and has scraped off all the make-up from our shoot. Her eyes flash wildly, her speech is excitable.

Click here to see more stunning new photos of Kerry Katona

Do Kerry and her husband argue a lot? "We rarely row, but when we do they can go on for a week. When it does happen it ends up in blows. I'll take a shot at him and everything," she says.

Does he hit her back? "No, never. That's one thing if he had ever done then he'd be gone. He knows who the boss is.

"Money is always in the background. Our last row was because he transferred some without telling me. He says he was trying to look after our interests and he knows I can't be a**ed to do anything with accounts."

Kerry's financial situation is not only a mystery to me, it's a mystery to her too. She owes £82,000 in tax, reportedly earned over £400,000 a year in lucrative deals with Iceland, MTV and magazines - and yet has nothing.

"One hundred per cent of my earnings are being taken by the tax man, so I'll probably have to go to court again. I am so used to having my money and control. Mark has to understand how much I hate asking: 'Can I have some money?' It's as if I've had a limb cut off. It's not his fault, it's my frustration.

"When people say: 'Mark only loves Kerry's money', it's a terrible insult. I'm quite a good-looking person. I've got a good personality. Maybe he likes being with me. Do people think I'm really ugly?"

null

So what has she done with her money? "I'm not a material person. It's my husband who's the spender, not me, but when I'm on a high it goes hand in hand with wanting to spend money," she says. "I might go to the Trafford Centre and get myself something, but the main thing I spend money on is school and nursery fees, and horse riding for the girls."

However, her four children - Molly, seven, and Lilly-Sue, six, from her marriage to former Westlife singer Brian McFadden, and her children with Mark, Heidi, two, and one-year-old Max - aren't the only members of her family Kerry's spent her cash on.

"I gave my stepbrother £20,000 and my mum loves money. To get her to love me, I spent a hell of a lot on her."

Did she do the same for Mark? "The most I spent on Mark was £53,000, and that was for a Lamborghini. He swapped it for a Ferrari but we don't have that now. We have one car each, one for the nanny and one business car.

"He earns more than me at the moment because he has his own car valeting business. I absolutely hate it, because since I was 16, I've always been the breadwinner. I want this bankruptcy over because I can't wait to be back in charge. They've frozen all my accounts."

Mark has been blamed for allowing her to make her shambolic and now infamous appearance on This Morning last October. She slurred her speech and appeared drunk, but Kerry insists: "What was it to do with Mark? I slept all the way in the car to the studio, Mark didn't hear me speak. But if it hadn't been for This Morning - I was mortified when I saw it - I would never have changed my medication.

The infamous This Morning interview

"It was a heavy dosage and I was on a drug that was prescribed during pregnancy because it doesn't affect the baby, but one side effect is that it makes you slur your speech. For that reason This Morning was a godsend. Now I have a psychiatric nurse who comes to see me once a week."

Kerry certainly attributes a lot of her strange behaviour to her bipolar disorder. She says: "I could be in my bedroom for three days, thinking my life can't get any worse and feeling almost suicidal. The next thing, I'm happy again and I've forgotten about everything."

In a bid to make people understand more about the condition, Kerry's made a new MTV series Kerry Katona: What's The Problem? For the past five months, their cameras have followed her as she visits psychiatrists, other bipolar sufferers and goes about her chaotic life as a wife, mum and celebrity.

A lot of people who are bipolar are self-harmers. Kerry has never done that, she says, but she has put herself in dangerous situations by trusting the wrong people. It doesn't help that her mother Sue, 48, is also bipolar - and that Kerry was clearly neglected by her as a child.

As Kerry says: "I'd never put my kids in care because I was depressed or because I wanted to be with my fella. I've never gone up to my little girl and looked her in the eye before I slit my wrists. I can't wait for Molly to grow up, and if I'm still famous, someone will interview her and ask: 'Was your mum taking drugs? Was she drunk? Was she a bad mum?' I can't wait for that day because I am a good mum and I've done my best for my kids."

Kerry with Lilly-Sue and Molly

Her relationship with her own mother is crucial. In the first episode of her new MTV series, her mother says: "I've got mental problems because of you. I was fine till you were born."

Kerry snaps back: "You had post-natal depression." Sue retaliates: "No, you were Damien."

You wonder what happens after years of having to numb herself to her mother's pain. The more she tries to distance herself from her, the more she needs her mother's approval. But then, Kerry is a mass of contradictions. She says she doesn't like the taste of alcohol, but then admits: "I like Lambrusco and it's cheap. It's pretty rare that I go out. When I do I'll have eight shots and I'm done for the night."

Previously Kerry resorted to harder substances to desensitise herself. Heartbroken after her marriage to Brian crumbled, Kerry started drinking heavily and would take drugs, eventually going into rehab to help her get over the split.

"I just wanted to escape and forget how awful I felt after I broke up with Brian. I would go out with friends every weekend and I would pay for everything and we used to get off our heads."

Kerry with ex-husband Bryan McFadden

Was that your real addiction, buying friendship and love? "Yes, that was it. I love to please."

She also tells me about when she went into rehab in Arizona Cottonwood clinic, in 2005, where she was diagnosed as being bipolar. She was depressed after the breakdown of her marriage to Brian and was struggling to cope with her then small girls, Molly and Lilly-Sue.

"It was there I realised it was all about my childhood. I would talk about it as if I was reading a script. I would make jokes and the doctor pointed out that I had been there for two weeks and not cried. When I did I wailed the place down. During the fifth week your family come out to see you. That was depressing. Everybody else was having big group family hugs and I sat there looking at an empty chair."

She says brightly: "It's made me a better mother though. I would never treat my children the way my mother did me."

Her life story reads like an episode of Shameless. Her mother, a prostitute and former drug addict, taught Kerry how to shoplift and how to perform sex acts with a banana.

Kerry never met her biological father Ron Armstrong. It was only recently she tracked him down, but he died before they met. One of her earliest memories of her mother Sue, is her trying to kill herself when Kerry was three, the first of many attempts.

She saw her third stepdad Dave Wheat stab her mother in the leg. They later moved back in together and Kerry asked to be taken into care when she was 13. The fact Kerry bounces back from catastrophe after catastrophe is in itself an achievement.

She laughs loudly at her own jokes, but you sense it's¿a fragile veneer. Ever hopeful, she feels that her new family - her recently discovered biological father had another daughter and four sons - "are just lovely, down-to-earth people". DNA tests have now confirmed Kerry is related to the family, and Lynsey, her new half-sister, is in regular contact, even texting Kerry during the interview.

"When I was seven my mother told me who my father was. I'm gutted I didn't get to meet him. The worst thing is that Lynsey said: 'If you'd knocked on the door 10 years ago we'd have welcomed you.' I wish I'd done that, but I didn't want to be rejected. I didn't want to turn up and say: 'Your dad had an affair and I'm the result.' What if that family split up and that was my fault? I can't carry that on my shoulders."

Kerry collects Max from nursery

Yet throughout her life she fantasised that everything would be alright when her real father came.

"I thought I would be like Annie and that my real dad would be Daddy Warbucks and he would come and rescue me. I knew he was a genuine person because that's where I get it from. I have met this family only twice, but I would trust them more than my own mum."

But does she trust Mark? "Not 110 per cent, no. But out of anyone, he'll be the one who's there for me. I trust him with my children. Molly and Lilly-Sue call him Mark, and Heidi used to call him Mark. Only in the last six months has she started calling him Daddy.

"After having Max I'm not planning any more children. The girls have all been so good and Mark looks after me. He makes me laugh. I've always gone for humour, never for looks.

"I completely trust Mark when it comes to women. Why would he go out for burgers when he's got steak at home? We've got a good sex life and he hasn't changed. Before I was with Mark I was independent, but he has looked after me and it's the first time anyone has ever done that."

Kerry lets Mark answer her phone and gives out his phone number because she fears calls bring bad news. I tell her there's a thin line between protect and control, but she dismisses my comment. You get the impression that she's flailing around inher own life, desperately wanting to be in control of it, but is easily overwhelmed. She was extremely nervous about her talk at the Oxford Union the day after our interview, but at the same time, proud. "It's all good then you get pushed down again. I'm knackered. Doesn't it show?"

No, not really. She looks in great shape. Has she been working out with a trainer again? "No. I've got too much going on."

Did she really lose 3st in two months? "I'm not sure. I got too thin. I went down to a size 6 after I had my breast implants taken out and had lipo on my back, hips and stomach. I've put on weight since then and Mark prefers me as I am now, a size 10."

It seems her new body has given the star renewed confidence, and she admits she'd like to do more acting. "I did The Vagina Monologues once. I had to fake 17 orgasms, but that wasn't hard, I was married to Brian at the time!"

When I ask Kerry when she's at her happiest, the answer is simple - when she's with her kids. "They haven't got a clue about my job. They know I do Iceland and photo shoots, but that's all they know about my life."

She wants to protect them from the constant battleground of her own world - and judging by her recent roller coaster ride, that's a very good thing indeed. l Kerry Katona: What's The Problem? starts next Sunday, 10pm, MTV One.

Kerry wears dress, River Island; shoes, Moda in Pelle

So Kerry Katona, have you ever...

Checked the messages on a boyfriend's phone?

Yes, but I don't check my own messages.

Googled yourself?

Yes, I've put myself on Google Alert.

Been arrested?

Yes, for fighting in a pub. My friend said I'm a worse mother to my children than my mother was to me, so I walloped her.

Feigned illness to avoid a social situation?

All the time.

Lied that you liked a terrible gift?

Yes. When me and Brian got married, someone had this portrait painted of us and Molly from the cover of a magazine. It was awful, but we hung it in the hall. He kept that. He kept everything except my jukebox.

Read something about you and thought: 'I wish'?

No. Mostly I think: 'Oh no'.

Kissed a girl?

Quite a few. I've never slept with a woman, I wouldn't know what to do, but I have kissed them. My mum's a lesbian [she had a lesbian fling] maybe it runs in the family.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY: XPOSURE, REX, BIGPICTURESPHOTO.COM, WENN HAIR: LUKE ANTHONY AT S MANAGEMENT MAKE-UP: AFTON RADOJCIC AT S MANAGEMENT

• Kerry Katona's piled back the pounds she lost from £15k liposuction op
• Bloated Kerry Katona cycles to get fit..then she stops for fag
• Kerry Katona bounces back
• We're sorry, Kerry
• Mark plays..Kerry pays
• You gotta be Kitten!
• Kerry KaTONa!

This article has 21 comments