Oddverse.com

Katie Price, eyeshadow model

Katie Price - novelist, singer, celebrity.

She is, to be fair, a bit crap. She's not great at singing, she's not great at writing, and she looks like a cartoon version of a hooker. By all rights, she should be a non-entity, but she is the biggest celebrity in the United Kingdom, and there's been nobody to challenge herself since Princess Panda went head-over-heels in Paris and Jade Goody went the way of all flesh.

I don't care what happens to her. I don't watch her shows. I don't seek out information on her. But I know a ridiculous amount about her personal life (I carefully avoided the use of the word "private" there), her personal wealth and her marital status. What she has been very good at is filling a niche in society. In a world where tolerance is a watchword, she has made herself in to the person that it's okay to be glad that you're not.

I was standing queuing for my lunch yesterday, and she was on the front cover of every magazine. Her life, it seems, is so dramatic that it is almost scripted. She "writes" an autobiography every year, and I do have a theory that they are written in advance, and she gets someone to read them to her so that she can find out what to do next. Her presence is so pervasive, it is almost impossible not to know who she is, and who she is marrying or divorcing this week.

She's not important.

The world will not come crashing to a halt tomorrow unless she steps in to rescue the economy.

She is not going to find a cure for cancer through breast surgery.

Her husband's sexuality is absolutely none of my concern.

But she's a distraction. She is escapism. Regardless of her personality, her perceived persona is one that makes people jealous and offended in roughly equal measures. That, if nothing else, is admirable.