I used to be super vain – now I’m the Strictly star with the smallest ego
Think Peter Andre’s a preening airhead? Get set for a surprise
ACCORDING to the bookies, Peter Andre, the Greek Cypriot-Australian permatanned, six-pack flashing, fading pop star and exhusband of one-time 32G glamour model Katie Price, is the hot favourite to win the tenth series of BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing.
It turns out he’s also the most popular contestant on the show. Which, frankly, comes as a surprise.
Particularly to some of my cynical friends, who pride themselves on spotting a fraud a mile off.
‘Isn’t he that oily little toe-rag who spends his whole time on reality TV and can’t even sing?’ asks one. Well... he is often quite buffed and glossy and suspiciously vain-looking.
And he has starred in countless reality TV series documenting every aspect of his life, first with Katie, who arrived at their wedding in a pink Cinderella carriage pulled by miniature horses; then as a single dad and then with second wife Emily MacDonagh, 26.
And it’s true, his voice is a bit squeaky — even he wouldn’t describe it as ‘good’ — and he freely admits failing music at school. But he is, apparently, a very good father — to Junior and Princess Tiaamii, his two children with Price — and Amelia, his daughter with Emily, who is a newly qualified doctor and 16 years his junior. He is 42.
He’s twice been crowned Dad of the Year and is adored by (the notoriously hard to please) Mumsnetters, who rave about his ‘emotional intelligence’, ‘moral goodness’ and ‘earnest tenderness’.
He is also worshipped by single mums desperate to meet, care for and do all manner of unmentionables to him as well as leave home-baked lasagne on his doorstep whenever he looks a bit thin.
Oh yes, and it turns out he can actually dance — not just wiggle his pecs as he did in his 20s.
Last week, he and his Strictly partner, Janette Manrara, were given two scores of ten and two nines by the judges for their Charleston. Craig Revel Horwood called it ‘absolutely exceptional’. Darcey Bussell said he could pass for a professional.
We meet at his favourite Kung Fu studio in Crawley, West Sussex, where he and Janette rehearse. In the flesh, he’s like a pocket air freshener. He’s wonderfully fragrant (he’s just launched his seventh perfume, Breeze), pleasingly muscled (particularly on top), but much, much smaller than you’d expect, with teeny-weeny slinky hips, beautiful brown eyes and a lovely smooth brow.
The first thing he does — before offering to make me one of his signature espressos — is introduce Sifu, his Kung Fu teacher. ‘My best friend. I love people, so I’ve got a lot of best friends. I make friends all the time.’
RECENT additions include all his fellow Strictly contestants, but particularly Jeremy Vine. ‘He’s a kind, humble person. He brings a lot of warmth. He’s earnest. I tend to bond with the same sort of people as me.’
Peter laughs at claims that he is ‘the vainest on the show!’ — forever pestering make-up artists for better cheekbones. ‘No! I’m usually the last in make-up. I’m the least maintenance.’
And what about reports of him regularly welling up with tears during rehearsals?
‘Look, I’m an emotional man,’ he explains patiently. ‘Anything family-based and I cry all the time — I watch a family reunion on telly and it’ll kill me.’
But on Strictly? ‘The only time I’ve got emotional was last week when they overwhelmed me with their nice comments and I had goosebumps and went out back and had a nice cry. There’s nothing wrong with grown men crying, is there?’
Of course not. He’s famous for it. He cried during an interview with Sky News anchor Kay Burley, when she bombarded him with questions about his children with Katie Price.
His eyes well up talking about his children. He blubbed all the way through his wedding to Emily, the daughter of the surgeon who operated in an emergency on his kidney stones in 2010.
‘I woke up and the first thing I saw was this very kind man. I thought he was Jesus. I was like, “Hello mate!” I was so grateful.’
So grateful that he asked the surgeon how he could repay him.
‘He asked for tickets for my next gig in Plymouth to take his wife and daughter.’ Were they both fans? ‘Well... Emily reckons she didn’t know who I was. But her mum says there was a picture of me on her bedroom wall.’ Whatever. They all came, became Peter’s new ‘best friends’, then hung out for the next two years until he declared his love for Emily — but only after he’d checked with her dad it was OK. ‘I was always very respectful and well-mannered.’ Chivalry and manners are important to Peter. ‘I
am nuclear with my kids on manners. A bit too strict. I don’t mind kids being spoilt, but I won’t have them being brats.’
It also means he looks back with abject horror on his 20s — when he dominated the charts with awfully saccharine hits Mysterious Girl and Flava and his chest was permanently on display.
‘If I could go back, I’d slap myself in the head and say: “Wake up!” I was crazy. I didn’t think. I was selfish. When I think of it all I cringe.’
To me, he sounds just like any other young bloke, thrust from obscurity to pop-stardom. One minute he was growing up in Australia, the youngest of six Greek Cypriot children brought up as devout Jehovah’s Witnesses, singing along to Michael Jackson cassettes in the bathroom mirror.
The next, he was touring with Madonna and Bobby Brown, blessed with a six-pack that looked like it was moulded out of plastic — and a healthy sexual appetite.
‘I was super-vain. I’d get through a whole can of hairspray when I was going out. I did hundreds and hundreds of press-ups a day. I did them on planes, I did them during ad-breaks when I was watching telly. I had 3 per cent body fat — which is really dangerous, by the way.’
His (extremely successful) chat-up lines included the gruesome: ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Let’s go then!’
He spLurGed on silly cars — Ferraris and Lamborghinis — and partied hard on black sambuca and a lethal-sounding cocktail called a Flaming Lamborghini, but never (he insists) did drugs.
He lived in an apartment block in London’s earl’s Court. Fellow Australian singer dannii Minogue was three doors down on the same floor and came to all his parties. did they, er . . ? ‘I certainly wanted to. she was beautiful, but I don’t think she was ever interested.’
TV presenters Ant and dec — then better known as pop stars pJ and duncan — lived in the flat below.
‘They used to bang on their ceiling with a broom shouting: “Keep it down! Keep it down!” They were always complaining — we thought it was funny.’ Today, they’re all friends. ‘I love them. I bow when I see them. I’m like: “You guys are gods!” But we were rivals back then.’
He also dated scary spice and is friends with all the spice Girls. ‘Victoria’s [Beckham] mum used to send newspaper clippings of me to my mum in Australia, and my mum would send all Victoria’s clippings back.
‘I saw Victoria recently and she was: “Aww, how’s your mum?” It’s so nice. We had such a laugh. she’s just lovely.’
Happily, while he spent wildly, his dad squirrelled — investing peter’s money in property in Australia, Cyprus and London.
But a healthy bank balance didn’t protect him from the emotional crash when his career fizzled out. He suffered years of panic attacks and anxiety.
‘I am living proof you can overcome them.’ He says he gets asked advice on how to deal with such problems from his 3.4 million Twitter followers. Others ask for parenting advice. ‘Who am I to advise anyone? Just put your children first,’ he says.
Many more are simply checking he’s happy in his second marriage to emily, despite the age difference.
‘she’s much, much smarter than me. either she’s very mature or I’m very immature.’
some people have dismissed Andre as ‘a bit thick’ over the years.
‘I’d rather people think I’m thick than that I’m a nasty person,’ he says with a warm smile. ‘It doesn’t bother me.’
It shouldn’t. He’s not just a pretty Botoxed face, but a successful businessman. He is raking it in, with a property empire, an expanding chain of coffee shops and an advertising campaign for supermarket Iceland — and he’s now blending his own wine, with a bit of help from the experts. He still sings and has an album of old standards, Come Fly With Me, out now and a tour in February. He can sell out the O2 Arena within hours of tickets going on sale. Fans still go crazy and hurl knickers — just bigger ones these days.
‘I got this huge pair of knickers thrown on stage six months ago. Massive. I picked them up and written inside, in an area that was quite, er, intimate, was “My nan loves you”.’ Thankfully, he doesn’t wear rolled-up socks in his shoes any more (‘horribly uncomfortable’) to make him seem taller than his 5ft 8½ in. ‘I thought I was 5ft 9in until Madame Tussauds told me I wasn’t when they redid my waxwork.’ And the six-pack? It’s not popped out once on strictly. ‘I’m not like that any more. I get embarrassed. I never show it any more.’
Other than in a number of pictures for his forthcoming calendar, of course. ‘I ask them every year, “Can’t we just do them with the shirt on?” They always say no.’
PeTer is nothing if not open. The only things he won’t talk about — I have been firmly warned before the interview not to go there — are ex-wife Katie price and a recent court case over a TV contract during which a High Court judge described him as ‘an extremely unsatisfactory witness’. While I don’t ask about price specifically, it’s inevitable — given they share their kids 50:50, met on ITV’s I’m A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! and lived their lives in a blaze of reality TV and OK! magazine publicity — that her name pops up. each time, he looks tense and sad and suddenly rather fragile. since their divorce in 2009, she has remarried twice — first to a crossdressing cage fighter and then to a serial cheat — had two more children and talked incessantly in interviews about peter.
He, meanwhile, has kept a dignified, if often teary, silence, never divulging the reason he left her, and never being mean. He did though subject his beloved kids to endless reality TV film crews. Is that good for them?
‘I see them as home videos,’ he says. ‘They come home and say, “please can we watch the dubai episode?” They love watching them.’
But does he worry about overexposure? He explains further. ‘Look, I have nothing but love and respect for david Beckham, but I don’t want to go and buy another man’s shower smell or gel or pants, however good the product is.’
He seems to have forgotten all about his own branded perfumes!
But never mind all that, because finally, after considerable prompting, he suddenly whips up his shirt, gives a quick flash of a rippling brown torso, goes rather pink and immediately asks: ‘Were you impressed?’
When I nod enthusiastically, he shouts ‘Yay!’ and punches the air.
peter Andre is neither complex, deep, stylish, nor entirely consistent. But he is deeply earnest and terribly well-mannered.
It’s hard to explain without meeting him, but there’s something about him — as female fans of strictly will tell you — that’s strangely touching.
Peter Andre’s 2016 calendar is available to purchase now.