First things first, I’m not inclined to read crap like this on holiday. It was a forfeit for arriving a day late on a ‘lads’ holiday (we aren’t real ‘lads’ that drink each others’ piss and headbutt other lads in the kebab shop, we just pretend in that post-ironic, self-aware way) which sounded better than drunkenly clambering into bed to find a massive dump waiting for me.

I guess you have to hand it to Katie Price, she’s done well for a lass whose USP was nothing more than a massive pair of cans and being an open goal for just about every male ‘celebrity’ of the late 90s. She’s turned what is more or less a Friday night at the local Oceana into a multi-million pound operation, which you’ve got to admire (but never aspire to). Though, as a graduate of English (and media), I had serious questions as to whether she was best placed to be writing anything for human consumption.

Upon embarking on my journey into the recesses of Jordan’s mind (an English degree trains you in the exploration of such uncharted plains) I become almost immediately aware that she’s more dangerous with a ghost-writer than Salman Rushdie’s sensitivity towards Islam. But the reviews begged to differ – “The perfect sexy summer read” – so I plunged onwards, hoping to have my vagina perfumed by her textual craftsmanship.

At this point it’s worth noting that I only managed to battle my way through 15 pages of her claptrap. It was just about the most innane thing I have ever read in my life. Worse than any blog, ever. Have you ever looked at someone and thought they looked so dense that you were surprised that light wasn’t bending around them? Well this is the sort of shit that’s running through that person’s brain whilst they stare blankly into the sun and probably the only thing they would read when taking a break from Take a Break magazine. It’s what people read when taking that 2 month break between talent shows. It’s a book about one girl, Crystal’s, quest to become famous via a talent show called *drum roll please* Band Ambition. It hasn’t even got the spectacle and trickery of X Factor, more the dankness of Popstars.

Obviously I didn’t have time to get into character development, though you can chalk that up to all of the characters in the first 15 pages being instantaneously dislikeable. Do you know why they were so dislikeable? Because the book is written by a bitch. No, literally. The description of every character is nothing more than a list of unreasonable and irrational reasons why girls don’t like people. This is the description of a typically sleazy A&R man: “He was dressed in a tight denim shirt and jeans which was fine if you were Heath Ledger but not such a great look for a man in his late forties, with moobs and a combover.” One of the protagonist’s band mates: “Belle was fortunate because her parents were wealthy enough to support her and she didn’t have to work” whilst her other band mate Tahila, “frowns too often when, with looks like hers, most women would have been smiling”.

It more or less endlessly goes on like that, bitchy encounters with birds with “Croydon facelifts” and dresses from “whores-R-US” and other nonsense until they get to the judges, one of whom is called Dallas and talks in an “LA drawl”. Yep. An LA drawl. At this point I’d all but given up, every single character sounded like a pornstar and I’d become so worn down by the bitchiness I was about ready to give myself up to the sea, but I had to know if their audition was a success, “A page-turner” just as the Evening Standard had promised (more importantly I was under obligation to continue).

It was. They drank champagne at “VIP Lounge”. There were 450 pages left. I threw the book on a fire at my first opportunity. The end.

Marcus Harris

This entry was tagged as jordan, katie price, reading.