At the height of her buxom bountifulness, the film star Elizabeth Taylor campaigned long and hard to get her sixth or seventh (she married Richard Burton twice) husband, the politician John Warner, elected. When he was finally made a Senator, a wit commented that Virginia had elected the three biggest boobs in the country.
I couldn’t help recalling this quote recently whenever I turned on the TV and saw Sam Fox, Kim Woodburn and - last but never least - Katie Price squelching about in the jungle. Three generations of chesty pin-ups for the price - ouch! - of one!
O.K, Kim is officially a cleaner, not a preener. But how weird was it to see Pricey and Foxy in the same place? Glamour girls, by their nature, never used to hang around - they retired at 27 to a gin’n’Jag gated estate in the Home Counties, married a dry cleaning mogul or a thuggish footballer, and kept their kit on unless they were in the poolside privacy of their Marbella holiday home for the rest of their natural-born days.
Now, thanks to kidulthood and cosmetic surgery, there’s no reason on earth for a glamour girl in her 30s (like Katie), 40s (like Sam) and eventually 50s (an age by which everyone had once been effectively mugged by gravity, but looking increasingly do-able these days) to quit making a living from her looks.
At this point I should declare an interest (apart from staring at girls chests, that is.) Both this year and last I was asked to take part in I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, and both times I turned it down because a) I’m not a celebrity, b) I don’t need the money, c) I’d miss Him Indoors too much and d) I’m so used to my creature comforts that I don’t actually remember the last time I stayed in even a 4-star hotel rather than a 5-star. Let alone sleep in dirt, wash in streams and urinate in bushes!
Ensconced on my hand-made silver velvet Chesterfield sofa with my feet in my husband’s lap and my snout in a tub of Haagen-Dazs Strawberry Cheesecake, the cat purring by the fire while the wind whistles outside, once more this week I have congratulated myself on my unique combo of cowardice and common sense as I saw my putative jungle-mates swimming underwater in septic swamps and lying in coffins having what looked the entire population of London Zoo Reptile House leaping in on top of them.
But there was also another reason to be very glad I hadn’t gone in. If Katie and Sam argued, came to blows even, WHOSE SIDE WOULD I BE ON? Who would I choose as my homegirl? And whose artifically-constructed nose would I attempt to shove up her own Botox’d bum in defence of my new BFF, if push came to shove? BECAUSE I LIKE THEM BOTH SO MUCH!
They’ve both got great tits. They’re both of working-class origin. They’re both TOUGH - nothing sexier, in my book. What sort of man/woman likes a weakling? Someone who fears that they too are weak, and wants someone even weaker to push around.
So far, so hard to choose.
But - which makes me think the Price is right - everyone seems to hate KP right now. And in my experience, hated women (obviously I’m not talking murderesses and kiddy-fiddlers here) often have something going on. After all, some years back ago I bagged the pathetic 85 position in a poll of Most Hated Britons - looking right up at The Artist Formerly Known As Jordan in her numero uno perch. And as I wrote in this very paper earlier this year, just after her separation from Saint Peter of Andre was announced;
‘The amount of condemnation now falling on her head is surely somewhat hysterical and hypocritical. Jordan isn’t going out at night and drinking the blood of babies. She is merely acting how most women of her age would behave if they had her high level of both fiscal and physical attainment. Unless you too have been that beautiful and that rich and have nevertheless managed to dedicate yourself to good works and humble living, your opinion isn’t really worth anything. And frankly, you’re going to come across as a bit of a jealous killjoy….’
Katie Price comes from my adopted hometown of Brighton and in her determination and obstinacy is the living embodiment of the old Sussex slogan WE WON’T BE DRUV. So it’s like supporting your local football team, too.
But on the other hand, no one likes a moaner, and in too many scenes from her reality shows she comes across as a hand-bagging nit-picker who could test the patience of a saint, six-pack optional. A lot of the time, judging from those, it’s like she’s got PMT, SAD and OCD all at once! And it’s enough to make you feel DOA just watching it from the distance of the TV screen…
If Katie Price is a dark, dangerous Rose Red, then Sam Fox is a short, sweet, Sapphic Snow White. That recent Celebrity Wife Swop featuring Sam and her missus, Myra, was another programme I was asked to be on, with my husband Daniel, but we didn’t do it because we both wanted to be paired with Sam - no disrespect to Miss Myra, but those knockers bring their own spotlights - and so they asked Freddie Starr instead. It’s true that the same people get asked time and time again to be in these shows; not only have I turned down Celebrity Detox (they wouldn’t have the time and i certainly don’t have the inclination) but do you remember the sight of that one-time great feminist icon Germaine Greer on Celebrity Big Brother, wearing a sieve on her head while whirling around on a roundabout in the rain, vomiting? They asked me first, but sadly I’d booked that week in a 5-star resort on a sun-soaked Greek island for me and Him Indoors. You BET I was bitter! (Joke!)
Anyway, you can easily imagine scampering woodland creatures running hither and thither at Samantha’s smiling behest as she sets about her jungle chores of a morning, so utterably adorable has this other one-time teenage Page 3 girl turned out to be. How refreshing to come across a public figure who uses her lesbianism neither as a ruse to turn on tragic men (Madonna and a whole pack of pop-tarts) nor as an excuse to behave like a vile bully while still playing the poor-persecuted-me card (Rosie O’Donnell) but shows it to be as natural as turning one’s face towards the sun for certain people. (Ellen DeGeneres is another of these lovely, lucky broads.) Set free of judging herself by man-made sell-by standards, Sam Fox’s bio doesn’t just look like a life well led, but like a cracking advertisement for crossing the floor.
So, whose side would I choose in a scrap? They’re both sexy, smart, successful and self-made. But whereas Katie seems to despise men yet keeps wasting herself on half-assed parasites not fit to lick her stripper shoes (and I include St P of A in there, fight fans!) Sam has simply cut herself loose of the wearisome, uncivil sex-war after tangling with one tool too many, and thus found her place in the sun, even after surrendering her place in the Sun. So until Wednesday night it was Sam, by a nose - or rather, by a nipple.
But THOSE trials made me realize all over again why I love KP so much. To think there are so many seat-sniffing sad-sacks out there with so little happening in their tiny lives that they get their tragic kicks spending money on seeing a woman they’ll never meet or know covered in muck! Talk about if you can’t beat them, join them; this is if you can’t have them, slime them.
Some sob-sisters will weep and whine about Price having been ‘pushed too far’ by the evil British public. But with a broad this tough, the cliches are simply redundant. Katie will come up from the barrells of fish-guts smelling of roses - and panic-attack all the way to the bank. And, once again, it made me recall what I wrote in the Sun during the seperation and the subsequent demonization of this gorgeous, gutsy woman;
‘For all that we’re supposed to swallow the Katie good, Jordan bad line, let’s not forget that as Katie, this young woman was molested, abused and beaten by men. But as Jordan she has made sure - £30 million sure - that she will never again be put in a position where she has to tolerate such behaviour. Forget the beauty - it’s the beast that makes this bitch so special. Whatever Katie does next, Jordan will make sure she comes out on top. And for such a great display of female strength and stoicism, we should praise, not pillory, her.’
So - Sam or Katie? Neither. COUNT ME IN ON TEAM JORDAN - loser and STILL champ!