Marsh: Wearing a suit doesn't make you clever

Jodie Marsh is one of the current clutch of D-list celebrities who are famous for, well, being famous.

Variously described as a glamour model and TV personality, she found fame on TV series Essex Wives and has since remained in the limelight by becoming a page-three girl, writing a sex column for a men’s magazine and taking every photo opportunity available wearing the skimpiest gear.

She has dated a string of guys from a number of bands – her latest boyfriend is 19-year-old MC Kenzie, aka James MacKenzie, from Blazin’ Squad – and hung around with other vaguely recognisable names including Calum Best, Fran Cosgrave and Lady Isabella Hervey, who coincidentally are all appearing in ITV1’s latest reality show, Celebrity Love Island.

Today, the 26-year-old is croaky with a throat infection and is tired as she was up until 4am at the launch party of her new autobiography, Keeping It Real.

She looks like a Californian babe – tousled blonde-streaked hair and a mega-deep tan which she says she got at her parents’ holiday home in Barbados.

Her eyes are a strange shade of lilac thanks to coloured contact lenses, surrounded by acres of kohl pencil and deep green shimmery eyeshadow. Pink, heavily pencilled lips complete the look. The voice is pure Essex.

The daughter of a millionaire scaffolding contractor, former stripper and lap dancer Jodie lives in a house her father built for her in the grounds of her parents’ sprawling mansion in the countryside near Brentwood, Essex, with her seven chihuahuas.

Educated at a £10,000 (€15,000)-a-year private school, she gained 11 GCSEs, but was a victim of bullying for years, so much so that her mother suggested she had a nose job at 15.

For a while after the surgery, the taunting got worse as the bullies called her ‘plastic’ face, but as the scars healed and she realised she could be attractive to men, she set out to make a name for herself in the fame game.

Surely, few women with such a sharp mind would want to be a glamour model?

“I do get a lot of stick,” she admits. “People call me a slapper and a bimbo because I wear skimpy outfits. But wearing a skimpy outfit doesn’t make me a slag, in the same way that wearing a suit doesn’t make you clever.”

Since displaying her assets, most famously in an outfit composed of two narrow combat belts strategically criss-crossed over her chest, she has been dubbed ‘Jordan’s rival’ by the tabloids.

She sighs at the mention of Jordan’s name.

“When I did my page-three debut the papers asked me for a quote and I said: ‘I want to be as big as Jordan’. I meant name-wise, but she took it as an insult and gave a load of abuse back, saying I’m ugly, and I gave it back to her, saying: ‘You’re fake. You’re plastic,’ and it’s gone on ever since.

“We used to hang around together before I got famous because her manager was going to take me on and he used to make us go out together. I got on with her because I had to but she doesn’t like any good-looking woman pictured next to her. She’s massively insecure.”

Jodie is well aware, however, that as long as the catfight continues, the publicity wheels will keep turning for them both.

Her new book is an explicit, tabloid-style read, charting her rise to fame. She stresses that it’s all her own work before taking another swipe at Jordan, whose memoir was published last year.

“I find it a complete joke that she recently went to the book awards. She hadn’t written it and she hadn’t even read it! You can’t compare me to that. I stick two fingers up to anyone who says I’m thick.”

Jodie admits she always wanted to be famous. “I always wanted to be seen as sexy and glamorous,” she smiles.

“Now that I‘m famous I can put my fame to good use, like going to hospitals to visit kids. When I walk in, the teenage boys are grinning from ear to ear and can’t believe it’s me. I couldn’t do that if I wasn’t famous.”

But celebrity has its downside too, she sighs.

“The lows of the job are not having a private life and not trusting anybody you ever meet, being slagged off every day in every paper and magazine by people who have never met me.”

She agrees that her outrageous clothes, heavy make-up and tough attitude in front of the cameras hide a deep-seated insecurity.

“I enjoyed the buzz of men looking at me from a young age and liked the attention and it covered up the scars from the bullying. It’s something I do to compensate for how I feel inside. But now it’s my job. I have to give the public what they want.”

In her book, she writes about her doomed relationship with nightclub-owner Fran Cosgrave, who she claims wasn’t interested in people who weren’t celebrities, hated her hogging the limelight, drained her financially and mentally, became jealous and paranoid and ended up sleeping with one of her best friends.

Days after they split up, Jodie discovered she was pregnant with his baby. When she told him he responded, in no uncertain terms, that she was a lying attention-seeker and to leave him alone. She went on to have an abortion and they haven’t spoken since.

“Fran’s famous because he slept with me,” she spits.

The men she’s gone for have largely used her for her fame, she says. But 19-year-old Kenzie is different.

“I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I think he’s genuine because he’s so young and untouched by it all.

"Others have been ruined by fame. Kenzie has only just come out of Big Brother. We’ve been together every day for four months.”

Jodie herself has appeared in a few TV reality shows, including The Games and Essex Wives. But she turned down Celebrity Love Island, she says, because she thought it was cheap and tacky.

“Isabella (Hervey) is one of my best friends and I’m so proud of her and I want her to win and I want to watch it because of her but at the same time I can’t bear to look at Fran’s face on the screen.

“Apart from Isabella, it’s a vile line-up. Rebecca Loos is famous for nearly splitting up a marriage with kids involved, Abi Titmuss is famous for selling stories on her own boyfriend to get famous.

"Calum is only famous because of his dad.

“The lowest of the low are all on one show. If you took Isabella away and dropped a bomb on the island it would be great.”

Jodie remains in demand. She begins filming a reality show for Granada later this month, which she won’t reveal details about, and is planning to write four Jackie Collins-style erotic novels and a sex guide.

“I want to expose the sleazy side of showbiz,” she says frankly.

She’s in the right place to do it.