Is thIs the vIlest woman In BrItaIn?
Katie Hopkins has made a career out of being controversial but her latest remarks about dementia patients beggar belief
sHE is almost universally reviled and with good reason. Katie Hopkins called depression “the ultimate passport to selfobsession”, said Angelina Jolie was “smug” after having a mastectomy and predicted Jeremy Clarkson’s producer would need a bodyguard to walk the streets.
Yesterday the 40- year- old went one horrify ing step further, tweeting: “Dementia sufferers should not be blocking beds. What is the point of life when you no longer know you are living it? Bang me over the head.”
It caused predictable outrage – she had suggested dementia sufferers should be euthanised to save the NHS money.
Katie Hopkins has made a fortune out of being Britain’s most hateful, shocking and reviled commentator. But does she genuinely believe this stuff or is it all one big act?
Her own mother had a mastectomy so she knows “smug” is the wrong word to describe it. And she has had plenty of death threats, which must occasionally upset even the toughest tweeter.
After she made her dementia comment she was invited on to Radio 5 Live, along with football pundit Robbie Savage, an ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Society who lost his own father to dementia.
He said her “stupid and naïve comments beggar belief” but then added in disgust: “You do it because you get paid to do it.”
Katie herself has admitted in interviews that those who employ her – she is a newspaper columnist, appears regularly on shows such as This Morning and earned a reported £ 400,000 for appearing on Celebrity Big Brother – do so purely because she is controversial. She said: “They are a consumer purchasing a commodity – me – and I have to demonstrate its value.”
She has 549,000 followers on Twitter, many of whom despise her. She retweets abuse, shares articles about her controversies and picks fights with celebrities who will get her more attention. She tweets harsh soundbites several times a day, trying to make one go viral. In short she does whatever will make her disliked by as many people as possible.
IF SHE says the right thing at the right time she will be the most talked about person on the internet for a week and then be invited to repeat those views on TV for a hefty sum.
There’s more than one public figure who uses social media as a shop window for their opinions: Katie Price, Russell Brand and virtually every columnist in the country do the same. But they generally seek approval – Katie Hopkins seeks the opposite. In fact she seems to need it.
She found her strict convent school “a hoot”. Ferocious drill
RISE AND SHINE: She is often found spouting forth on This Morning sergeants at Sandhurst mocked her appearance when she was a recruit. And she frequently refers to herself as ugly, with a “beaky nose” and a reputation as a “vile cowbag”.
When she left the Celebrity Big Brother house she laughingly heeded the boos, waving her hands to increase the volume.
Yet when I met her a year or so ago she was a pleasure to be with. We had been on a Channel 5 programme debating the future of the welfare state and on camera she was as you’d expect: calling Annabel Giles a failed model, insisting only “wealth creators” should get benefits and having a ruckus with White Dee of Benefits Street fame.
aFTERWARDS, with the cameras off, she stopped me having an argument with someone else about Iain Duncan Smith. “Let’s stop talking about it or there will be a row,” she said, despite having just provoked a massive one in the studio. We had a few drinks, she was charming and funny and when we left – despite the fact she’s a tiny size 8 and had TV make- up on – she was genuinely worried about the paparazzi taking an unfavourable picture.
Later I discovered that like me Katie has epilepsy. Hers is much worse giving her frequent nighttime seizures that dislocate her shoulders, requiring hospital treatment. It is a condition that you have to come to terms with because it carries a risk of brain damage and sudden death. It makes you vulnerable, a quality she rarely displays.
Yet this same woman boasted of her affairs with married men and laughed as she told me how someone had threatened to rape her with a handgun. She seems to be as tough as old boots.
But perhaps not as vile as she pretends to be. In one early task for Celebrity Big Brother she was asked to pour the vitriol for which she is notorious on her fellow housemates but struggled to find much to say, leaving viewers thinking it didn’t come naturally. It is a little- known fact that Katie was a guinea pig for the very first Big Brother in 2000. She was just 24, hungry for fame and notoriety but not remarkable enough to capture it.
Seven years later she told Lord Sugar she didn’t want to be his apprentice and went on to invent herself as the sneering, splenetic person the world has come to know. But Lord Sugar’s sidekick Nick Hewer saw through her. He told Katie: “Here’s what I think is going on. You’ve decided to create a new brand, Katie Hopkins.”
He predicted she would capitalise on her vitriol and added: “It has made you famous but it has made you loathed and where is it going to take you now?”
It is a question that, now she has pushed controversy to its very limits, she might want to ask herself. If it is all an act it will end only when she – or her audience – lose interest.