Katie Price calls Gareth Gates the ‘one that got away’ 24 years after taking his virginity

Katie Price’s love life has had more switch-ups than the Sugababes lineup but it seems she’s still got time for Gareth Gates.

The fleeting romance has gone down in British pop culture history as one of the most memorable and scandalous moments of the 00s.

In 2002, the newly single then 24-year-old glamour model, still going by Jordan, took the Pop Idol singer’s virginity while pregnant with her first child, Harvey.

Rebounding from her short relationship with Harvey’s father, Dwight Yorke, Katie had a night of passion with a then-17-year-old Gareth, who denied it at the time.

Two decades later, and Katie’s claimed Gareth was the one who ‘ghosted’ her, and her family still fondly ponders what could have been.

Imagine meeting someone 25 years ago and then they sort of ghost you,’ she said at the launch event for her docuseries, according to The Sun.

Katie continued: ‘You don’t know why and then you go forward 25 years and then you get the answers. Because he had thought I’d done something which I didn’t do and now, he finds out, it really wasn’t me.’

The singer had initially denied their fling, later explaining that he hadn’t wanted his family to find out and he had been concerned for his career.

He believed Katie had sold the story and said that had been ‘a lot for a kid who wasn’t even an adult yet to take’ when details of their liaison landed in tabloids.

While Gareth has spoken about the fling over the years, he’s said to go into new details in an interview for her docuseries.

‘The shock on his face and the shock on mine,’ Katie added with a laugh. ‘Everyone was like, “You and Gareth, that was the one that got away!”‘

He appears in a later episode of the four-part Sky series, Katie Price: Nothing to Hide, which was produced by Louis Theroux’s company.

Speaking about the romance previously, Gareth shared on The Big Reunion: ‘I denied the whole Jordan thing because I was 17, I didn’t want my family to find out about my sex life.

‘If I hadn’t lied it wouldn’t have been a big deal, my family, friends and fans wouldn’t have felt as let down I guess For me I was very young, I had to say I don’t want to have a long-term relationship at this age, so she sold the story, and I said it was all lies.’

In the years since, Katie has also rarely spoken about Gareth but did defend sleeping with him, pointing out much of the notoriety was because she was pregnant.

While on the Anything Goes podcast with James English, she calmly said: ‘Yeah, I took his virginity when I was six months pregnant.’

In response to a disapproving head shake from James, Katie quipped: ‘Just because I’m pregnant don’t say I can’t have a boyfriend.’

Gareth is said to be one of a few of Katie’s former flames who decided to speak for the docuseries, which was commissioned before the Lee Andrews saga.

Her fourth marriage has turned out to be her most turbulent yet, with a whirlwind wedding to a runaway husband who ended up locked up in a Dubai jail.