Kerry Katona has reflected that she ‘wanted to kill [her]self’ after her infamous car crash This Morning interview in 2008.
The former Atomic Kitten star, 45, was accused of being drunk on the ITV show after slurring her words, as she insisted on the morning show when faced with questions by Phillip Schofield and Fern Britton that her slow speech was due to taking medication late the night before.
‘ITV was my home. I loved it. It was like stability. I like doing Loose Women because it was regular. I knew what I was doing. I felt like I had a proper normal job,’ Kerry reflected on Paul Brunson’s We Need to Talk podcast.
But this all changed after this interview, in which Kerry was supposed to be promoting her MTV reality show, Crazy in Love.
‘I was on Celebrity Juice the night before and I didn’t get home until very late, and I took my medication late,’ she explained to Paul of her bipolar disorder medication.
While insisting ‘no one did anything wrong’ at ITV, as she arrived late due to a car crash en route and didn’t see anyone until she was sat on the sofa, Kerry admitted: ‘I was still half a sleep mate, I was knocked out.’
‘When you’ve had that medication the night before, the next day my speech can be a bit slow,’ she said, adding: ‘To me I thought I sounded normal. It’s like a speech impediment.’
Kerry described arriving home from the interview to the fuss of a crime scene, with paparazzi and camera crews crowding around like she’d won I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! again.
‘I wanted to kill myself,’ Kerry admitted of the fall out, which saw many stories circulate about her, claiming she was addled with drugs and alcohol.
‘As I drove up to the house, my neighbours hated me. There were camera crews and paparazzi. And I kept thinking, I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. I don’t know, but I was the pinnacle of that kind of era of knockdown,’ Kerry said.
‘I think it’s still to this day, the number one car crash interview ever of all time until Prince Andrew did his. It’s like cheers for that love, you knocked me off the spot.’
Kerry doesn’t blame Schofield or Britton for asking her about her slurred speech, but the ‘way they went about it’ was wrong, she thinks.
In the interview, Britton pushed questions about addiction onto Kerry, who was forced to deny she had a problem with alcohol, while Schofield told her she seemed much different to her old self.
When Kerry tried to explain she was on medication, they didn’t seem to take it on board.
‘At that time no one understood mental health issues,’ Kerry reflected, revealing no one knew in 2008 she had bipolar disorder. Her therapist said it was best not to be open about it as people wouldn’t understand.
For all the distress, Kerry thinks the interview was ‘worth doing’ and she doesn’t regret it, because it opened up a conversation about mental health at a time when the subject was far more taboo.
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