Katie Price's Mucky Mansion, review: Channel 4 should be better than this worthless vehicle

Katie Price fronts a new ‘documentary’ for Channel 4 – Channel 4

You might think that Katie Price’s recent conviction for drunk driving while disqualified and uninsured, leading to her fifth driving ban and an observation by a judge that she thinks herself “above the law”, would make Channel 4 think twice about giving her a show. And perhaps you might have expected the channel to pull the programme after Price’s arrest last week on suspicion of breaching a restraining order against her ex-husband’s fiancée, imposed after a tirade in a school playground.

But no, here is Katie Price’s Mucky Mansion, with an introductory voiceover informing us that the former glamour model/professional train wreck is “a 21st-century icon”, and a “designer, best-selling author and political campaigner”. No mention of that criminal record. The tone was so fawning that Kim Jong-un’s people are probably on the phone right now, asking Channel 4 if they can get the fly-on-the-wall treatment.

It is, unbelievably, a home makeover show. Perhaps diehard fans will know the backstory to why she moved out of her Sussex house (former residence of Lord Maude of Horsham, no less) and let it fall into ruin, or why she still owns this 8,000 sq ft property with tennis courts when she was declared bankrupt in 2019. And why on earth did the place become a “magnet for fly-tippers”? The programme didn’t tell us any of that stuff. Instead, it wanted to wow us with Price’s visit to the garden centre, or a sequence in which she decorated a pen pot.

Most homeowners don’t go up in a cherry-picker, wearing a bright pink hard hat, to inspect their own chimney. But the programme-makers needed something to fill the time. No surprise when Price created another mini-drama by smashing the chimney pot.

Price made a decent documentary for the BBC last year about caring for a disabled child on the brink of adulthood. That had value. This programme does not. It is simply a vehicle for Price to attempt some image rehabilitation for the umpteenth time. She is so used to parading her life in front of the cameras that every line was an attempt at a soundbite, albeit delivered in a deathly monotone.

“It’s a challenge that I can even consider living in this house again,” she said, over some stirring music, as if she was a Daphne du Maurier heroine. Is there anything positive to be said about this show? Well, her handyman seems nice. That’s about it. Channel 4 should be better than this.