Kerry Katona latest phone-hacking victim
Tuesday, 23 August 2011 3:25 PM
By Phil ScullionFollow @PhilScullion
Kerry Katona is the latest celebrity to claim she was a phone-hacking victim, telling her Celebrity Big Brother housemates she felt "violated".
The reality TV stalwart told fellow contestants that the police had informed her she was a target of the News of the World.
Ms Katona left girl band Atomic Kitten in 2001 and embarked on a television career on light entertainment shows.
However it has been the regular and often shocking stories about her turbulent personal life which have cemented her fame.
She said: "The News of the World made me more famous than being in Atomic Kitten. I was a bit of a f**k-up anyway, I can hold my hands up for that, but I felt violated.
"They literally destroyed the little bit of my career that I had going. The amount of stuff that they had [on me] was unbelievable."
Police are currently in the process of informing potential hacking victims whose names are present in the notebooks of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator employed by the News of the World who was imprisoned for his role in the phone-hacking scandal.
Ms Katona claimed that before police contacted her she had been blaming friends for leaking stories to the press.
She added that the paper had been intercepting voice messages left on the mobile phone of her ex-husband Brian McFadden, her mother and her drug dealer.
The twice married reality TV star, who has had well publicised drug problems, is appearing in the Celebrity Big Brother house alongside Jedward, Tara Reid, and wife of the Speaker of the House Sally Bercow, amongst others.
When questioned by fellow housemate and picture agency boss Darryn Lyons, who pointed out she was sure to have made a "tremendous amount of money" from the exposure, Ms Katona said the exposure had made her more famous but not more "money famous".
"I lost a hell of a lot of work through that," she continued, possibly in reference to the decision by supermarket chain Iceland to drop her lucrative advertising contract.
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