Kerry Katona says phone hacking made her famous
Kerry Katona has claimed she was a phone-hacking victim - and said it cost her financially, although it also boosted her fame. Kerry told fellow Celebrity Big Brother housemates she felt 'violated' by the hacking, but the stories made her better known than in her days with chart act Atomic Kitten. She claimed the News of the World had the numbers of her mother, her ex-husband Brian McFadden - formerly of Westlife - and even her then-drug dealer. "The News of the World made me more famous than being in Atomic Kitten," she said. "I was a bit of a f***-up anyway, I can hold my hands up for that, but I felt violated. "They literally destroyed the little bit of my career that I had going. The amount of stuff that they had (on me) was unbelievable." Kerry said before police notified her of the hacking, she was blaming her friends and accusing them of selling stories to the press. Housemate Darryn Lyons - a picture agency boss - was quick to point out that the exposure made her a 'tremendous amount of money'. Kerry said the notoriety had made her more famous, but not 'money famous'. "I lost a hell of a lot of work through that," she added. Kerry was dropped from a lucrative contract with the Iceland supermarket chain following newspaper stories about her drug use. The 30-year-old also discussed her controversial 2008 appearance on This Morning, insisting her slurred speech was caused by prescribed medication for bipolar disorder.
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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.
An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.