I LOVE a good conspiracy theory! And my long suffering colleagues have heard enough of my latest, so in the spirit of preserving their sanity, it’s time I shared it with the rest of you.  Katie Price and Peter Andre; they split up right?  Really? I’ll try to keep this brief…

Consider the facts.  Or let Google trends do it for you.  Katie (red line on graph – for the purposes of quick illustration I’m not adding another variable by including the name ‘Jordan’, because it’s also a country etc), love her or hate her, is worth an estimated £50 million and has made her money almost exclusively from media deals, or other business ventures that have been driven by mass media exposure.

So, Katie marries Peter (blue line on graph) in 2005, who you can see from the search volume chart, has always had less search interest that Katie. There is interest for Peter, too. But they were such a celebrity ‘couple’ and largely featured in interviews together.  It may well have been annoying for him because he’s releasing his own music, was going on tour and might have been worried that people would think he’s just Katie’s puppet.  But hang on, if they ‘split up’ and promote a ‘team Katie Vs team Peter’ movement – particularly if Katie ensures that she’s disliked enough to turn the nation to team Peter – he’ll not only sell more than four albums, but they’ll BOTH get paid for media exclusives (because as much as the nation seemed to want to punish her in the recent ‘I’m a Celebrity…’ antics of late, we’re to involved by now to even consider not actually reading about Katie).

Ever wished that you could clone yourself to double your earning potential? Just look at what’s happened to our blue line here – it’s reaching up to meet the red one, and it’s quite possible that they might meet in the middle before long.  More interest in both individuals equals more income for each individual from media deals, equals an absolutely massive combined fortune.  And they’ve nothing to lose;  Katie has commendably managed to turn around her reputation from being the celeb that everyone loved to hate (circa 2002) once before, so she knows she can do it again (no doubt kicked off with a marathon interview with the pair of them spouting tales of forgiveness in OK!).

In my opinion, it’s either that, or they were never properly ‘together’.  But hats off – what a great business model. We may never learn if we’ve been deceived or not, but it’s certainly been entertaining.