In her second Jodie Marsh Has Her Say column for Closer Online, Jodie Marsh speaks out in defence of her new BFF Katie Hopkins...
Katie Hopkins: everyone has an opinion on her. I’ve personally always liked her and over the years have agreed with a lot of the things she says. I feel like she says things that a lot of people are thinking but daren’t say. Also, I’m a big fan of honesty. I’d rather hear a harsh truth than a dressed up lie. With so much bullshit and fakery in showbiz, she has always stood out to me as someone who’s REAL.
Last year, when I started doing the “In bed” interviews for my YouTube channel{
I feel like Katie and I are quite similar in lots of ways; we’ve both been through a lot, we’ve both said things that have got us in trouble, we’re both loud and outspoken and we’re both like Marmite (you either love us or hate us). No one ever really sits on the fence when it comes to Jodie Marsh and Katie Hopkins! Add to that the fact that she has recently spoken out about The McCanns (a topic I feel VERY strongly about, as I’m sure you know), and she’s been splashed all over the news for her recent libel case, I thought: “I NEED to talk to this woman!”.
When I eventually asked Katie to do the interview, she didn’t hesitate. There was no fee. I asked her to come to my house (she came by train and paid her own train fare – most celebs would be demand a posh car here and back which I would have to pay hundreds of pounds for!).
I picked Katie up from my local station, and from the minute I met her I knew we were going to get on. She looked stunning; she was dressed in a very elegant and classy suit, and her face was radiant and glowing. We laughed so hard in the car on the way back to mine and chatted for another two whole hours before finally getting around to doing the interview. She shared so many of my views about the showbiz fakery and politics, and how people like us are often excluded or pushed out in favour of ‘the favourites.’ She was charming to both my manager Kieran and my mum (who had come over, as she too wanted to meet Katie).
Katie brought some lovely pyjamas with her to wear for the interview and couldn’t wait to get them on, proudly telling me she also had bed socks which her husband had bought her as a present. After the interview we had lunch - a platter of lovely fresh filled rolls (I had brie and onion, she had chicken & bacon, for the record). I had asked her husband prior to the meeting if she had any dietary requirements and he said: “No, she’s a Greggs and Cadburys type of girl!” I had a stack of Cadburys as well as a Victoria Sponge waiting for afters!
I can honestly say that Katie was LOVELY. She has very strong views on various topics and she’s not afraid to air them, but what’s wrong with that? I too have very strong opinions about all sorts of things, and Katie and I both HATE injustice.
You might disagree with Katie’s views, but most of the things she says are factually correct and NOT (in my opinion) bullying. For example, when she once famously said “fat people need to eat less and move more” – she was right. Most people who are overweight probably DO need to eat less and do some exercise. I’ve been overweight (not that ANYONE will ever see the evidence as I made my mum burn the photos, ha ha ha ha!). When I was 19 and in an abusive relationship I turned to food as a comfort. I put on a LOT of weight. I was huge for my tiny 5’2” frame, and it was all because I was stuffing my face every night with giant bowls of pasta. When, one day, I realised how terrible I looked (it was a particular photo showing rolls bulging around my midriff and protruding from the totally inappropriate top I was wearing), I knew I had to act.
Now obviously, there will be some people who are overweight due to medical reasons or due to a problem they can’t control, but I don’t think Katie was referring to those people. I think she was talking to the general masses of overweight people; people who, with the right diet and exercise, would NOT be overweight. She then went on to prove her theory by gaining four stone and losing it again. I think she makes a valid point, and I can say that as someone who was once really fat! I know that my body responds to what I put in it and how much exercise I do.
But when Katie makes a factually correct point she gets called a bully, and that really annoys me. I was bullied terribly at school; they screamed abuse at me every day relentlessly for six years. They called me ugly and picked on my nose saying it was massive and wonky and that I was a freak. They kicked footballs at my head, pinned me up against the wall in the toilets with threats of violence, damaged my GSCE course work, stole my things, spat in my pencil case and PE kit, excluded me from every sports team, threw food at me in the dinner hall (to the point that I stopped eating lunch and used to hide in the library), mocked me and laughed and sneered at me every time I walked past them. Finally, they broke me; a 17-year-old boy punched me, and I left the school. Bullying is something that happens when the bully (or group of bullies) picks on one person and repeatedly targets them to try to ruin their life. It’s incessant and relentless. It’s trying to make that person feel shit and worthless. It’s purposefully and actively trying to upset that person.
Now, going back to Katie’s comments; if you actually listen to what she’s saying, she’s trying to HELP fat people. She’s giving you the answer: EAT LESS, EXERCISE MORE. And besides that, she’s not targeting one individual and making their life hell on a daily basis. She’s making sweeping comments about whole groups of people who, in her opinion, could help themselves. After all, it’s not actually healthy to be overweight!
Since I made it public knowledge that I was making a YouTube video with Katie I have seen the barrage of abuse she gets on a daily basis. I have witnessed the level of hatred towards her. I have read the vile and horrendous comment she gets, and all of it has made me feel sick. People claim SHE’S the bully, yet they’re saying that in the SAME tweet as “I HATE her, I’d like to punch her in the face” or “She needs to be shot” or “Someone throw acid in her face.” Erm… right.
How these people can call her a bully at the same time as publicly wishing her dead is beyond me. Also, they get really personal and bully her over the way she looks (again, something I hate). Saying that a whole nation is overweight (we mostly are), and saying directly to someone’s face “you look like a man in drag” are not the same thing! One is a statement of fact about society, the other is a personal attack.
I’ve received a lot of stick for interviewing Katie; I’ve had it all week, everything from “how can you interview a bully?” to “I used to have respect for you and now I don’t.” I even had someone I thought was a friend say to me: “I’m so disappointed in you Jodie!” I told her to piss off… though in a slightly more polite way!
I used to get lots of hate and trolls back in the day when I started out as a glamour model, so much so that I stopped reading papers and magazines, and wouldn’t even listen to the radio (one day the broadcaster launched a scathing attack about how my parents must be so disappointed in me. For the record, they weren’t and aren’t disappointed in me, but it made me cry and from then on I never listened to the radio again). Luckily for me, it all turned around when I started bodybuilding and then went on to make investigative documentaries, and I’m over the moon that these days 99% of my followers are amazing and lovely, and I rarely ever get abuse any more.
But cut to me announcing that I’m interviewing Katie Hopkins and it was like I’d released The Kraken! The trolls appeared from every angle, insults were slung left, right and centre. Mostly it was directed towards Katie, but I took a LOT of flak just for the fact that I’d given her airtime. The very people calling Katie a bully were now bullying ME just for talking to her!
Well, I have a message for those people: it’s up to ME who I interview in my own home for my own YouTube channel. It’s also up to me who I like and dislike. I pride myself on being very open-minded and on not judging people until I’ve met them (unless it’s someone like Myra Hindley, who I absolutely WOULD have an opinion on and rightly so!). I like to make my own mind up about a person because, as far as I’m concerned, unless a person has committed a heinous crime then we can never know a person until we’ve met them and got to know them a little.
In my last documentary for TLC I interviewed murderers and paedophiles, and I said I felt sorry for them; I didn’t receive any criticism for that. Yet, I have a chat with Katie in my bed, and twitter explodes! And that’s exactly what’s wrong with the world we live in. Katie hasn’t killed anyone or raped a child, yet I’m actually losing friends over my chat with her! But I do a doc inside a prison with a woman who looked me in the eye and said: “I shot my son in the head,” and everyone loves it and praises me for it! THE WORLD IS MAD!
Katie talks in the YouTube video about receiving comments like, “I want to rape you with a machete,” and how she brushes them off. Interestingly, when I asked my real friends on my private Facebook if they had any questions for Katie, the main one that everyone asked was, “how does she deal with all the hate” and “how is she so strong”. The truth of it is, she really just IS that strong and she deals with it by not taking it personally. She describes it as “knowing they are angry and they just don’t use the right words.” Many people (including me) could learn from this outlook. How many times have we fallen out with someone over something they’ve said when the reality is that they just might have been angry and not able to articulate themselves properly?
Katie is strong because she HAS to be. From being rejected from Oxford and then the military (because of her epilepsy - something which still upsets her now), to having brain surgery which has left a hole in her head (I felt her brain pulsating in my hand!) and nearly killed her, Katie hasn’t had it easy in life. She has faced the same struggles we all have, made worse by having fits in the middle of the night which are so strong she’s dislocated her arms and knocked her teeth out. She’s done all this at the same time as being a great mum to three kids and having a hugely successful career in TV, radio and journalism. She’s a force to be reckoned with and now that she’s “better” (after her op), she feels even more invincible (she describes herself as being like Robocop!).
Katie sees life as it really is: something to be enjoyed and grabbed with both hands. She’s not afraid to say what she thinks (even at the risk of upsetting people and of being the target of more hate), and she’s not afraid of challenging injustice in the world. And I respect that big time.
I am an anti-bullying campaigner and always will be, and as someone who holds that title, do you honestly think I would willingly invite a bully into my own home and bed? Think about it.
I don’t think Katie is a bully. I think she thinks something, and then it comes out of her mouth. Let’s go back to the “fat” comments that seemed to anger people so much. Don’t tell me that you’ve never seen someone on TV and said, in the privacy of your own home, “I don’t like that fat one” or “She’s a lump” or “Blimey, she’s put on weight.” Katie simply says these things for more people to hear than just her children, friends and partner. And you may not agree with that being said publicly, but you don’t HAVE to follow her or take any notice. You could just ignore it and/or laugh it off.
Katie once made comments about not liking tattoos, and I am smothered in them. Was I bothered? No. Did I feel the need to rant to her? No. Did it even register to me as a “thing” – NO! I’m only mentioning it now to prove my point that if you are truly happy within yourself then why would you care what one woman thinks about something that is associated with you? I love my tattoos. Do I care if anyone else hates them? NO! And it doesn’t make a difference to me what anyone thinks because it’s MY body and I’m the one who lives with them. And anyway, I happen to agree with Katie’s thoughts on tattoos; they are a way of getting attention (I’ve always said they’re an acceptable way to self-harm). And as for the fact that Katei said she wouldn’t employ someone with tattoos, neither would I in certain situations. If I owned a trendy clothes shop or a gym: absolutely. But if I was hiring someone to work in a corporate office or a posh restaurant, I probably wouldn’t. There are definite aesthetics associated with certain jobs, it’s just that simple.
On a similar note (and in defence of Katie), I have flown all over the world with hundreds of different airlines, and I have NEVER in all my 38 years seen an overweight air steward. They are always slim and well-groomed. I don’t know if it’s anything to do with regulations or health and safety (at the risk of sounding fatist, would a large air steward pose a risk at getting stuck down a narrow aisle in an emergency? I don’t know. But I have even read that airlines employ slim women as it saves on fuel!), or whether it’s just the airlines wanting to portray a certain image. But either way, Katie simply SAYS she wouldn’t employ someone who was obese or covered in tattoos and everyone annihilates her, yet airlines DO seem to only employ slim staff (as far as I’ve seen, at least), and no one bats an eyelid. Go Figure!
I honestly think Katie is a really nice person. She nearly cried twice during the interview while talking about her kids and the fact she nearly died. She was open and honest and most of all REAL. I’ve met so many celebs over the years, and 95% of them are as fake as my boobs. They’re all sweetness and light on camera, but as soon as the camera stops rolling they’re vile. They want the world to love them and pretend to be one of the people, but in reality they see themselves as above everyone else, and only do things for their own gain. They’ll only be your friend if they think you have something to offer or if hanging around with you is good for their “image.” I’ve had a celebs move away from me as they haven’t wanted to be photographed with me more than once (I’m not “cool” enough for them to be seen with). And on the flip side, I’ve had celebs cling to me when photographers appear, to try and get some publicity off the back of me.
Even more horrendous are some of my fellow anti-bullying campaigners. I won’t name names, but I’ve had other celebs actually say to me: “I was never bullied and I don’t care about bullying, but working for this charity makes me look good”. UNBELIEVABLE!
If you really listen to what Katie says, she speaks a lot of sense. She’s ballsy and fearless (qualities which I LOVE), and she’s soooooooo much fun! The interview is hilarious, and once the camera had stopped rolling we laughed even more. She was so easy to get along with - it felt like I’d had my mate over for the day. People (I’m talking to those who call her names and spout vitriol at her), should give her a chance.
And you know what? If you don’t like Katie or things she says, DON’T FOLLOW HER. It’s that simple, she doesn’t even have to feature in your life. Instead of ranting at me, or her, take up a hobby to fill those wasted hours online: go for a jog, do some gardening, bake a cake… wash your own mouth out with soap! Do ANYTHING except troll people online, because then you’re just doing the very thing you’re saying you’re against! We don’t have to agree with everything someone says to be nice to them or to respect them as a person. We don’t have to have the same interests to get along. Live and let live I say!
I for one am glad we have strong female personalities, like Katie, who aren’t afraid to speak a few home truths. Sometimes it worries me how PC the world has gone and how little we’re allowed to say! You only have to look at me - arrested for texting my own husband to ask for money he owes to my dad - to know that political correctness and do-gooders have turned us into a nation of wet saps. How a 6’2” bloke managed to convince the police that he felt “distressed and alarmed” by little old non-violent anti-bullying 5’2” me is BEYOND ME, but that’s exactly what happened, and it’s terrifying. Human rights now equals a loss of freedom of speech to the extent where you can’t even have a row with your own husband! I’m all for protecting vulnerable people, but not when it involves wasting tax payers money on arresting people like Katie and I for simply SPEAKING in a non-threatening, non-damaging way.
In my opinion Katie is fabulous, and I will not let anyone tell me otherwise. I refuse to be bullied or trolled by the very people who are calling her a bully. I like her, I respect her, I’m on her side, and I hope we stay friends forever. She’s one of the most real people I’ve ever met in showbiz, and if you find that offensive then perhaps you need to go and give yourself a talking to. I’m entitled to like people and form my own friendships, and no one can tell me I’m wrong to LIKE someone! More love, less hate, please! xx
Do you agree with Jodie that Katie Hopkins is a breath of fresh air?
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