One thing Katie Price has never mastered is the gracious art of stepping aside to allow someone else a share of the limelight.
Such is her addiction to fame that the former glamour model becomes ‘depressed’ if even a fortnight goes by without her name or photograph appearing on a website, in a newspaper or magazine, friends once told the Daily Mail.
So when her ex-husband Peter Andre – whom she is said to despise – announced earlier this month that he was preparing to release his first album in more than a decade, she knew exactly what to do.
On Friday – the very day the Mysterious Girl singer launched a full-throttle promotional push for his musical comeback – Katie announced, to the surprise of her 2.7million Instagram followers, that she was engaged… for the ninth time in 30 years.
Peter, 52, meanwhile, had spent the day heavily promoting his first new single in more than a decade, urging fans to pre-order the track and teasing the upcoming album.
‘What a tune,’ he wrote to his own two million followers on Instagram.
But it was Katie’s own social media update a few hours later that saw jaws hit the floor.
A series of photos posted by Katie Price taken in the lavish Jumeirah Burj Al Arab hotel revealed her engagement to Dubai-based entrepreneur Lee Andrews
The twice-married Lee Andrews appeared in some of the photos
A series of photographs, taken in the lavish Jumeirah Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, revealed the star posing beside a hot tub, clutching a glass of champagne.
On the floor around her feet were strewn a sea of red rose petals and lit tealight candles, carefully arranged to spell out the words: ‘Will you marry me?’
And if anyone had missed that, there was no mistaking the enormous diamond ring that now perched on the engagement finger of her left hand.
The lucky man, who appeared in one of the photographs and revealed a fresh tattoo of Katie’s name on the back of his hand, was Weslee Andrews – known as Lee – a handsome Dubai-based entrepreneur whose own social media is filled with images of his exposed torso.
But the unexpected revelation has caused tongues to wag. Not only did it emerge barely two weeks after Katie had announced her split from her previous boyfriend, former Married At First Sight star JJ Slater, but those who know the model have accused her of deliberately manipulating the situation to hijack Peter’s career move.
As one source told me: ‘Katie can’t be without a man, she craves male attention and will do anything she can to keep herself in the headlines. Lots of people are wondering if any of it is even real, or just Katie being Katie.
‘The fact is that Peter released his single hours earlier. There is no way Katie wants Pete to have the attention and she has none. It’s classic Katie. She’s been doing it for years.’
Indeed, my source says Katie, 47, has previously tried to steal the limelight from the daughter she has with Andre, 18-year-old Princess.
Just days before the launch of her daughter’s ITV reality show The Princess Diaries last year, the star claimed she had been left ‘upset’ after being banned from taking part in scenes filmed for the series, including her daughter’s 18th birthday party – effectively turning the spotlight back on herself.
One of the pictures showed Katie posing beside a hot tub, clutching a glass of champagne. On the floor around her feet were strewn a sea of red rose petals and lit tealight candles, carefully arranged to spell out the words: ‘Will you marry me?’
The timing of the announcement raised questions, considering her ex Peter Andre had just announced his first new music in more than ten years
‘Katie just can’t help herself,’ the source tells me. ‘We saw it when her daughter Princess was enjoying her first taste of the limelight last year.
‘Katie just had to make it all about her, fuming that she wasn’t a part of the show and doing everything she could to get in the Press. She’s an attention-seeker, and she can be a horrible one at that.’
Her announcement also comes amid growing alarm about her well-being. Last week fans were stunned, saying she ‘didn’t look well’ and claimed she must ‘need help’, after images emerged of her looking ‘worryingly thin’ during a shopping trip in central London with Princess.
She has since said she was seeking medical advice. But that apparently didn’t seem to stop her jetting to Dubai last week.
Katie, who also has a son, Junior, 20, with Peter, revealed on Instagram that she and Lee Andrews had celebrated their engagement with champagne, strawberries and chocolate cake, captioning the post, ‘My Richard Gear [sic] swept off my feet. Manifesting does work.’
Then, in the early hours of Saturday morning, Katie posted a video of herself with her fiancé. Prompted by him to show ‘the crowd’ her left finger, she held up a large, square-cut diamond ring and joked viewers should ‘put their sunglasses on’.
‘That is beautiful. Look at that. I’ve been spoilt,’ Katie said. ‘You’ve actually really spoilt me.’
‘Let’s see how sparkly that is. That is like 25 carats,’ the businessman said, before claiming it would all be ‘old news tomorrow’ and kissing his wife-to-be.
Twice-married Andrews is, according to his social media profiles, CEO of a company called Aura Group Future Urban Travel, and a ‘defense contractor’ and ‘visionary’ who claims he has a net worth of $1.5billion.
Articles cite him as having a PhD in biotechnology science from the University of Cambridge, while his LinkedIn profile as ‘Dr Lee Andrews’ mentions time spent as the ‘director of philanthropy’ at King Charles’s charity The Princes Trust and as a board member of the Labour Party – despite being in Dubai for the last 20 years.
Before Katie, he was married to Palestinian health and fitness coach Dina Taji, who he met in a Dubai gym in 2020.
There are no photographs on his social media of Katie until the engagement announcement, which he captions: ‘Congratulations to Katie Price & Lee Andrews.’
But despite the spectacle, the speed – and secrecy – of the announcement has stunned even those closest to her.
JJ Slater, for one, was said to be ‘blindsided’. The 32-year-old had been with Katie for nearly two years before they separated earlier this month, and had only just moved his belongings out of her home. Katie is said to have doubted ‘for some time’ whether he was ‘husband material’.
It is also unclear whether her five children knew their mother had met someone else, or was planning to marry again.
‘Katie never thinks of her children or how her behaviour is going to affect them,’ an insider says.
Her first engagement came in 1996 when she agreed to marry Gladiator star Ace – real name Warren Furman – when she was just 18.
She has since been engaged a further eight times and has three ex-husbands – Peter, former cage fighter Alex Reid, and Kieran Hayler. Hayler is the father of her youngest children Jett, 12, and 11-year-old Bunny. Katie also has a son, Harvey, 23, from a brief romance with former footballer Dwight Yorke.
So will she make it down the aisle again this time?
‘It’s unlikely,’ says my source. ‘If she does, they won’t be married for long. Katie is a mess and nobody can work out what she is playing at.’
But one thing is for sure: as long as the spotlight is on Katie, there will be more jaw-dropping headlines to come.
