Tuesday, August 10, 2010

British Glamazon Katie Price Puts Pad on the Market

SELLER: Katie Price, a.k.a. Jordan
LOCATION: Surrey, Woldingham, UK
SIZE: 10,000 square feet, 8 bedrooms 7 bathrooms
PRICE: £2,950,000

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The United States is hardly the only country in the world where a glamazonic gal of few talents can become wildly famous and filthy stinking rich with little more than a pretty face, behemoth bazooms, and a shameless aptitude for p.r. stunts. Case in point is Katie Price–a.k.a. Jordon–a busty babe who is without a doubt the U.K.'s richest and most famous publicity seeking "beauty" queen.

Not surprisingly, Miss Price started up her ladder of d-list fame in the late 1990s as a boobie baring model on the famously lurid Page Three of the The Sun. In 2001 Miss Price the parlayed the popularity of her mammoth mammaries into a silly and unsuccessful campaign in the British General Election promising stoopid things like free plastic surgeries and tax cuts to anyone having an affair with a foreign soccer player. Her star really began to rise, as they too often do, when Miss Price began to show up on any reality program that would book her.

The public, bless their little hearts, found Miss Price's life so fascinating that from 2005 too 2009 she and her singer/songwriter/television personality husband Peter Somebodyoranother–who, it should be noted, met in 2004 on the reality program I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!–starred in a vast myriad of "documentaries" and reality programs about their vapid lives. Listen bunnies, no one loves an embarrassingly dumb ass reality program more than Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter, but we'd rather be fried up in a pan like a damn chicken leg than sit through one of Miss Price's little reality show ditties.

In addition to all the reality programs and "documentaries" the impressively entrepreneurial Miss Price made some music, made three children, wrote three autobiographies, published 5 novels–ghostwritten, of course–and penned a bunch of childrens books. The bizzy beaver also wrote–and perhaps still writes, we don't know–an advice column for OK! magazine even though Your Mama can't imagine what sort of person wants any kind of advice from Miss Price unless its instructions on how to shove plastic body parts into vulgarly revealing outfits or how to get the tabloid press to cover every last detail of your life. Amid much brouhaha and press Miss Price and huzband Peter Somebodyoranother went splitsville in May of 2009. Whoopdeedoo.

Anyhoo, now that we've all got a good idea who Miss Price is, let's circle back to the real estate matter at hand. In the summer of 2008, the year before Miss Price and Mister Somebodyoranother got a dee-vorce they reportedly splashed out around £2,500,000 on a new mansion in a rural area of Surrey in a tiny village near Caterham. Reports from the time indicate the mansion was formerly used as a retirement home and that the once happy publicity mongers planned a £500,000 renovation of the home.

Not long after buying and renovating their home in the U.K. Miss Price and Mister Somebodyoranother lit out for the U-nited States in a futile attempt to expand their celebrity horizons. They first leased a house in the Sunset Strip area and then bolted for the Villa Cascata, a 14,000 square foot Italianate mansion in the hills above Malee-boo for which they reportedly forked over around $100,000 per month.

Their time in the Bu was short lived because by the summer of 2009 Miss Price had put Mister Somebodyoranother out with the trash and hooked up with a new man-friend, British cross dressing he-man actor Alex Reid. Mister Reid, for those not familiar with his antics, has a bit of a thing for getting dolled up in ladee's garments and calling himself Roxanne. In February of 2010 Miss Price and "Roxanne" were married in Las Vegas, NV and, although Your Mama can't fathom why anyone might care, there appears to be some amount of speculation about whether their nuptials are legal.

Now that Miss Price and "Roxanne" are hitched and sharing wardrobes (that's him/her on the left in her gold bikini), they've decided to dump the mansion in Surrey where Miss Price and Mister Somebodyoranother lived when they were married. Thanks to an informant we'll call Neilly O'Hara, Your Mama has learned that Miss Price recently listed her house with a guide price–that's asking price in Britishspeak–of £2,950,000. A quick consult with our currently conversion contraption shows that amounts to $4,702,830 or €3,547,610 at today's rates. The decision to sell, it has been reported, has something to do with the Miss Price believing that the mansion is inhabited by two ghosts.

Listing information indicates the architecturally vague mansion sits on about 1.3 acres and measures around 10,000 square feet with 8 bedrooms, and 7 poopers. A gated drive leads to a parking lot sized motor court that butts right up against the front facade of the the 3-story structure that features some half-timber bits and pieces and a couple of awkwardly situated turrets. The only bit of landscaping at the front of the house is a long, sad, single line of potted plants.

The front door opens into a symmetrically designed double height reception hall with beige marble floors, taupe wall coverings and a grand staircase with wrought iron railings and some crazy decorative nonsense that looks to Your Mama like two giant sprays of bird feathers or perhaps a couple big ol' boo-kays of knives blooming out of the tops of the newel posts.

Listing information indicates that in addition to a drawing room/cinema room the mansion includes a formal dining room (that Miss Price has pressed into use as a playroom), study, and very late 1970s Playboy mansion style family room with fireplace, plum colored wall to wall carpeting, a massive chocolate brown leather sectional sofa, and a huge mirror with a chunky frame that looks to Your Mama like it might be made of tufted pewter colored velvet.

There's a breakfast room and commodious kitchen with white cabinetry and black counter tops that appears to have been lightly remodeled after Miss Price and Mister Somebodyoranother bought it in 2008. Also re-worked since Miss Price purchased the place is the indoor swimming pool complex that has a mosaic tiled swimming pool with a medallion design on the bottom and a Greek key pattern that runs around the edge. A glass roofed extrusion, an orangery is what it's called in the U.K., lets out to the rear extra wide rear terrace that runs along the back of the house. Beyond the terrace, a thick stand of trees surrounds a lawn large enough to land a helicopter.

It's not currently known to Your Mama where Miss Price and "Roxanne" plan to move once the mansion in Surrey has been sold, but we're sure the press will be alerted when Miss Price and "Roxanne" feel the time is right for the public to know.

Miss Price's previous real estate holdings include a 1930s house on 13 acres in Maresfield in Wealeden, East Sussex that she bought in 2004 for £750,000 ($1,195,640 at today's rates). We have no idea if the 5 bedroom house remains in Miss Price's property portfolio. In 2007, while still married to Mister Somebodyoranother, Miss Price laid out £1,750,000 ($2,789,820 at today's rates) for a "sparkly pink granite" house in Larnarca on Cyprus. The newly constructed and gated villa includes a swimming pool, roof terrace, and private lift...or elevator in Americaspeak. We don't know if this property is still owned by Miss Price, if it was granted to Mister Somebodyoranother in the dee-vorce or if it's been sold off.

listing photos: Hamptons International

12 comments:

ms_wonderland said...

'Architecturally vague'. That's one way of putting it Mama. A gawdawful mess is another. Still it suits her, all fake pointy bits and an ugly facade.

Chardonnay Bernstein said...

well it's rather reassuring to see the United States is not the only place doing the fugly McMansion bit......

Anonymous said...

It's not nearly as bad as I expected.

I can't take off points for the indoor pool, no matter how tacky. I don't have one.

Anonymous said...

In the 1970s, Mary Roebling's Trenton NJ townhouse, complete with an indoor pool, was turned into a gay bar. A bridge was erected over the indoor pool, upon which we danced to the strains of "I Will Survive." Ms. Roebling's architectural masterpiece cum (Lat. with) gay bar was tragically razed and replaced with a parking lot. We could survive just fine, thank you, in Mizz Price's 1970s Playboy Mansion styled rumpus room; however, we would build a bridge over the indoor pool.

Wistfully,
Rod and Studly

Anonymous said...

That purple/plum-colored room scares me more than any ghost could

StPaulSnowman said...

As an inveterate fan of English domestic architecture, I can only surmise that they flew over a few Las Vegas cross-decorating specialists to give this place its special zing. The result speaks volumns in favor of the UK system of listing and restricting how much a house can be remuddled. The best part of this post is that Mama ventured across the pond once again and it didn't involve Brangelosis.

Girl at the Smack Bar said...

OK when you drop things like "sparkly pink granite" we need to be warned is all I'm say'in. My drink now covers my husbands laptop. The granite would probably look perfect in Gibbons home imho. See breeding never really helped people acquire class not even the English.
Mama could you update us on the shore that is no more?

Anonymous said...

Ugly, sorry and cold, much like it's owner. Rather sad existence, yes? All the false parts.

Lady Leonie Bairstow Eves said...

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/3020620/Katie-Price-buys-a-house-for-her-televised-marriage-blessing.html

Link to article about new house for Mizz Katie. Was featured on the UK property search website rightmove.co.uk.

Cheers x

Anonymous said...

The English don't do modern well at all. Remember the house built for Prince Andrew, then abandoned, then sold?

Anonymous said...

Katie currently owns this house (the one she is selling) and the one she is moving in to. All of her other properties were sold, and the "sparkly pink granite" house in Cyprus was built by her ex-father-in-law and owned by her then husband. He still owns and visits the property, as his are from the area (but now live in Australia).

Anonymous said...
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