About two weeks ago, Katie Price started to talk about making a ‘massive comeback’.
She felt anxious, she confided, because she thought that she was simply not earning enough. Indeed, she had dyed her hair a plain brown because she said she was ‘fed up’ with paying to have her highlights attended to.
Gary Cockerill, her great friend and regular make-up artist, was told that she was reducing his hours because she was feeling the pinch.
Even her mother Amy could not cheer her up - Katie was in a miserable humour. But having been in America for months, paying rent on a house in Malibu but not earning any money, she felt broke and forgotten, and fretted that she had been eclipsed by Jade Goody.
And there is nothing which annoys Katie (who has built up a £30million fortune) more than the threat of obscurity.
A source who spent time with her during this period recalls that she was grumbling about the ‘thunder thighs’ she had built up training for the London Marathon, and was even more bad tempered than usual with her husband Peter Andre.
Katie told the source that she was going to reinvent herself in some spectacular way - which she did not specify - and confided that she was going on one of her juice-only detox diets to try to shed a stone to be ready for the blaze of publicity she was about to attract.
These are the sort of meanderings to which the 30-year-old former glamour model is prone, and nobody took much notice, as she often talks about wanting to be the nation’s biggest star again.
Happy couple? All seemed well between Katie and Peter when they appeared at the British Soap Awards the day before announcing their split
On the run: Peter and Katie ran the London Marathon together last month
Products to promote: An equestrian range is one of the products Katie is currently seeking publicity for while Peter has a new album out soon
I do, again: Katie and Peter have already sold their wedding and renewed their vows, but expect another ceremony and magazine deal if they have a reconciliation.