My Life: Peter Andre

Reality TV pioneer, presenter, musician and pop star, fashion designer, fragrance creator, coffee shop owner and favourite Aussie import – not least because he fell in love with British model/personality/author Jordan (now Katie Price), and then (so his fans would argue) withstood her, stoically and with characteristic good humour, for five years – three of them married and most of them played out on reality television.

There is no typical day for Peter, and that’s how he likes it. Right now, he’s doing voiceovers for The 60 Minute Makeover Show, has calendars coming out, and is filming a new Cancer Diaries series for This Morning.

“There’s a lot going on. I am very, very grateful for my job,” he says. A perfect day would be “fishing in the Barrier Reef, on a lovely little boat, where I can have the kids around me”.

In a world that can seem crazy-mad, family and friends are necessary for reality checks. Last year he lost his much-loved brother Andrew to kidney cancer.

“I keep going because I honestly believe it’s the people you have around you,” he says. “I don’t have ‘yes people’. They tell me what they think of me, which isn’t always what I want to hear. I’ve got kids who are definitely there to tell me what they think, and I don’t always get my way.”

Peter and Katie split in 2009, and both are now with new partners. Peter is looking forward to becoming a father again in the New Year, as his medical student girlfriend Emily MacDonagh, 24, is expecting. “Being a parent is an amazing experience,” he says. This is one relationship that he is keeping relatively quiet about, although he does say: “I’m really happy at the moment.”

He admits too that he tested his two new fragrances on Emily, and she prefers the more sophisticated Forever version, which is aimed at his older fans (the other, Forever Young, is more for his ever popular teen fans). “I couldn’t call one Forever Old and one Forever Young. That wouldn’t be right,” he says.

The new baby will be a sibling to his children with Katie, Junior, 8, and Princess, 6. As three-time winner of the Dad of the Year award, Peter is officially a great father. “What makes a great parent full-stop is putting your kids first,” he says.

He ought to have long since run out of fingers to put in pies. He even has two coffee shops, one near his home in Surrey and one in Brighton, called The New York Coffee Club (there could be plans for expansion and franchises), and last summer he launched a clothing line.

Through the Peter Andre Foundation, he raises money and awareness for cancer, and fully funds a mobile unit for Cancer Research UK to promote early detection.

“Every time somebody is confronted with cancer, they think it is a death sentence, and it isn’t,” he says, adding: “If people can just not be stubborn like me. ”

Peter has that grounded, self-deprecating humour that we British love – and demand – of our adopted Aussies.

“I think, in this industry, if you can be humble as much as possible, I think you will do okay.”

Peter Andre is at The Perfume Shop, St John’s Centre in Leeds, at 12.30pm this Friday and then at The Perfume Centre on Coney Street in York at 4pm, also this Friday, September 6.

Peter’s sweet smell of success

Peter Andre was 16 when he was offered a record deal live on air on Australia’s New Faces.

At 23 broke into the UK charts with a string of catchy hits, including Mysterious Girl. In 2004,he entered the jungle for ITV’s I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here and met Katie Price, with whom he went on to create two adorable children and several fly-on-the-wall documentary TV shows and series, plus an album of duets called A Whole New World. Still we loved him.