Gareth Gates speaks out about 2002 romance ‘I got to know real Katie Price’
Gareth Gates and Katie Price have revealed the truth about their romance in 2002 – with Gareth admitting “I did have feelings of love for her”.
Their relationship was reported at the time as a fling with 17-year-old pop singer having sex for the first time with Katie, who was better known at the time as 23-year-old glamour model Jordan.
Looking back now, Gareth confirms the pair were close for several months and he says: “I certainly did have feelings of love for her. It was the first time I was feeling those things. I didn’t know what it was. But yes, I certainly did love her. To be in love? I think I was too young.”
Gareth, 41, also tells a new Sky documentary that Katie “mentioned marriage and kind of spending the rest of her life with me” within “literally weeks” of them getting together.
And speaking now Katie says: “It’s mad, really, because he might have been one that got away, because what I see of him now, he is still a very, very handsome, good-looking man.”
The pair have not spoken for many years though after falling out when Katie went public with their relationship in a front page newspaper interview where she went into detail about their sex life.
They got together when Katie Price ’s flatmate Sally was doing make up on Pop Idol and passed on her number with a message to Gareth that Jordan fancied him.
After chatting on the phone and texting the pair arranged secret meet ups, but there were no lavish hotel rooms or dates because they had to keep things secret.
Instead Katie waiting with her friend in a car with blacked out windows and Gareth would sneak out of his London hotel.
Katie, who was pregnant at the time with her son Harvey, explains: “We would drive to Sally’s place, she had a little flat in Hayes, she had a sofa bed. So she’d pull out the sofa bed, and he knew I was pregnant.
“He’d put his hand on the belly, and I used to say ‘does it put you off?’. It didn’t put him off at all.”
Gareth was smitten and recalls how relaxed the relationship was to begin with. He says: “The only thing I knew of her, she was a glamour model. So you sort of have this image and persona that you think of what they’re going to be like. She was completely different.
“She was very soft. I sensed her vulnerability, like me, very kind, very very loving, and yeah, with me, she was anything but Jordan.
“I think she often wears this mask that she sort of hides behind. I don’t think she lets too many people in. I got to know Katie.”
In those first weeks, Gareth would often tell Katie when he was singing on Pop Idol and looking down the camera he would be singing for her which she found “cute and romantic”.
He made the final on February 9, but lost out to Will Young, although Gareth would still go on to have number one hits too and was hugely famous at the time.
The pair had agreed to keep the relationship secret, but they hit problems just a few weeks after Pop Idol ended at the Brit Awards on February 20, 2002.
A hidden camera in a hotel corridor spotted Katie leaving Gareth’s hotel room and a story linking them was published.
Gareth “felt sick” receiving the phone call about the photos and his management suggested Katie had planted the camera herself, something she and the photographer deny to this day.
Reeling from the story and claims it could wreck his new pop career, Gareth decided to let things die down a little and didn’t message Katie as much, meaning the relationship started to fizzle out.
But when they bumped into each other at an Elle magazine party months later and were photographed again, so rumours about them continued.
By this time Gareth had denied the romance several times on advice from his management.
“I shouldn’t have denied it but I was naive,” Gareth tells the new documentary
For her part, Katie also seems to have regrets too.
Fed up with Gareth’s denials and angry at the way the relationship had ended, she gave an interview going into huge detail about their sex life.
She says: “I was left in the lurch and I’m like, you hurt me, I’ll get you back by telling the truth like revenge.”
Gareth says the “betrayal” hurt him and impacted him for a long time afterwards.
Looking back in the second episode of new series Katie Price: Nothing to Hide, reflective Katie says: “That’s a moment I wish I never did.
“I wish I never took his virginity for his sake, and I just sometimes wish he could have saved it for someone that he loved and could have had a relationship with. When it come out, I wanted for him to then be like, “Do you know what? Yeah, she’s telling the truth, but it was still denied, kind of like he’s better than me, and I’m nothing, and like he doesn’t want to be associated with me.”
* Katie Price: Nothing to Hide, a four-part Sky Original series, will be available on Sky and streaming service NOW on 8 July.
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