Kerry Katona has five kids and they have three different fathers. While the star may have started out as one-third of Atomic Kitten, in recent years the singer and TV personality has perhaps become best-known for sharing insights into her life as a mother.
She has five children altogether. With former Westlife star Brian McFadden she had two daughters, Molly and Lilly-Sue, born in 2001 and 2003 respectively. Then, with taxi driver Mark Croft, she had daughter Heidi in 2007 and son Max in 2008, and she welcomed Dylan-Jorge, or DJ, with late rugby player George Kay in 2014.
Over the years, Kerry has spoken about all three of her children’s fathers. From the hilarious to the heartbreaking, here’s everything she’s said.
She has to ask each of her children who their dad is
Last year, Kerry joked that she has to ask each of her kids who their dad is out of Brian, Mark and George. She said, according to The Mirror: “I’ve had that many husbands I can’t keep up, I’ve got to Google it half of the time. I say to the kids, ‘Which is your dad?’ Honest to god, Father’s Day at my house you can’t get a car parking space, it’s a nightmare.”
However, she also said that she can’t see herself having any more children with her fiancé, Ryan Mahoney. She explained: “I previously spoke about freezing my eggs to potentially have a baby with Ryan. But now I can’t see us ever having children together. In all honesty, I just can’t imagine Ryan with a newborn and getting up in the middle of the night for feeds.”
Kerry Katona’s youngest doesn’t remember her father
On the fourth anniversary of George’s death earlier this year, Kerry revealed that youngest daughter DJ doesn’t remember her father. Being only four years old when George died suddenly of a drug overdose, DJ doesn’t have memories of her dad.
Kerry explained: “DJ wants Ryan to adopt her because she doesn’t know any different. The older kids have more memories of George, but DJ only knows Ryan.”
She also said that the hardest thing about George’s death was breaking the news to DJ. She continued: “I was angry, I still am. He put, not just me, but the children through so much and then just died. The trauma stays with you.”
Brian is a “better dad” to his younger daughter than he was to Molly and Lilly-Sue
Last October, Kerry spoke of her daughters’ “hurt”, as Brian proved himself to be a “better dad” to his daughter Ruby, born in 2021, than he was to them.
She said: “The older the girls have got, the more of a relationship they’ve had with Brian. That’s not me [bleep]ing him off, he’ll admit that himself. He’s a better dad now to Ruby, and I think that hurts the girls.”
And the previous month, Brian himself admitted that he didn’t have as much time for his older daughters when they were younger due to his career with Westlife. He said: “When I had both of them, I was in Westlife, so I had no time. We didn’t have FaceTime or video calls back then. So I missed so much of them, their first steps, their first words. I missed so much of that.”
Brian has “never co-parented” his daughters with Kerry
In March last year, Kerry said that she was the only one to parent Molly and Lilly-Sue. She said that the last time the girls saw her and Brian together was the previous March after a death in the family, with that also being the first time Lilly had seen her parents in the same room since their 2004 divorce.
She went on to claim that he’d never co-parented alongside her, saying: “If I’m being honest, me and Brian have never co-parented the kids. I’ve been the one to parent them. It’s just always been that way.”
She “didn’t get maintenance money” from Brian
Appearing on Ellie McKay’s On a Mission podcast in August, Kerry explained: “I’m the one who provides for them. I didn’t get maintenance money off Brian. I signed a piece of paper saying, ‘You can keep your money, give me my kids.'”
She continued: “He didn’t want to get divorced in England because we got married in Ireland. We had to legally be separated, if like for six years, before we could get divorced. I didn’t want that, if Brian doesn’t love me, I want a divorce, so I wanted to get divorced in England, because I was an English citizen.
“I said, ‘Look, if you don’t want me, you don’t love me, I don’t want your money, just give me half the money from the house that we sell, and I will sign a piece of paper, just give me my kids.’ I signed the piece of paper, I got the kids, and he [bleep] off to Australia.”
She said that Mark did cocaine with her
During her marriage to Mark, Kerry saw her fortune dwindle to the point where she was declared bankrupt, and she also had a cocaine addiction, as MailOnline reported. She said: “I hated my life. I’d lie in bed for three days in a row doing cocaine with Mark. We did coke in our en suite and had a lock on the door. The kids knew if the bathroom door was locked they mustn’t come in.”
She also said: “I took so much coke with Mark and I had hoped he’d try to stop me, and go, ‘I love you too much to see you do this,’ but he never did.” Meanwhile, Mark said later that he “bled Kerry dry” during their marriage.
She made a couple of digs at Mark in 2021
When taking a picture of herself beside a scary Halloween costume in October 2021, she quipped on social media that she was back with her second husband – her followers certainly saw the funny side, with many joking that the costume was actually better-looking.
The following month, she appeared on GB News with Nigel Farage, and discussed her cocaine addiction, comparing the drug to Mark. She said, The Sun reported: “It’s called the devil’s dandruff. It’s the most evil thing in the world, even more so than Mark Croft. It is very, very evil, and for me it’s something I know I will never go back and do, never in a million years. I’ve worked too hard to get to where I am today.”
She described George as a “psychopath” after his death
A few weeks after George died in July 2019, Kerry called him a “psychopath”. She said: “If God gave me George back for one day and I had the choice to give him DJ for that one day, I’d say no. Knowing George, he’d take her with him.
“I’ll never doubt how much he loved her – he idolised her – but he was a psychopath.”
Kerry also said that his death was “almost a relief”, as it would spare daughter DJ from witnessing her father’s “psychotic episodes”. She added: “If he hadn’t have died, it would’ve been me. My mum says she was just waiting for the call from the police to say he’d killed me.”
Kerry Katona’s said that George threatened to inject DJ with heroin
In October last year, Kerry revealed that George threatened to kill their baby daughter by injecting her with heroin, according to The Mirror. She wrote in her autobiography that one of George’s friends visited her after his death to tell her that she’d done the right thing in keeping DJ away from him – according to the friend, he was planning to inject her with heroin before killing himself.
Kerry also said, recalling a conversation with George on FaceTime before his death: “He had threatened to rape my mum and slash her up in front of me. So I didn’t know what he was going to do next. I was terrified he was going to hurt her or DJ.”
Read more: Kim Woodburn launches shock attack on Kerry Katona in heated clash: ‘You look as common as muck’
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