Peter Andre: Fame, Fortune and wearing slippers

Peter Andre used to be like Marmite - you either loved him or you loathed him. Mostly, it was women who loved him, principally because he flipped the tables on the social norm of females appearing semi-naked on TV and instead dared to get his kit off. Men, on the other hand, loathed him for the same reason, albeit with a grudging jealousy for a set of abs which looked like they’d been spray painted on. Of course, they hadn’t and that was the problem.

These days, however, it’s fair to say the nation mostly likes ‘Our Pete’. Twenty years after the release of his single Mysterious Girl, he’s almost reached national treasure status.

The fact he’s still very much in the limelight is something which is not lost on the 42-year-old (he turns 43 later this month).

When I catch up with him, he is preparing for his forthcoming self-titled tour, Peter Andre, which begins on February 29 and arrives at Leeds First Direct Arena on March 9.

“I’m extremely grateful for where I am,” he says. “I’m very much aware that this business can spit me out tomorrow. It’s a very fickle industry and you never know how long it’s going to last.” While he may be on a high at the moment, which a forthcoming tour and album, Come Fly With Me, he’s already planning ahead. He now has a growing chain of coffee shops, under the name NY coffee club and later this year he will open his first restaurant. Recently married to doctor Emily MacDonagh, with whom he has a daughter named Amelia (born in January 2014), he has two children to his previous marriage to Kate Price.

Peter was discovered 25 years ago on Australia’s New Faces talent show, the equivalent of Britain’s Got Talent today. “I went on New Faces and I was offered a recording deal live on air, it was the first time they had ever done that live on TV. It was life changing and I was nervous at the time thinking, wow, does this man know what he’s done?

Born in London, Peter moved to Australia aged six.

“My parents were very strict Christians, they were Jehovah’s Witnesses, I was also a Witness when I was a lot younger, I used to go to the meetings, I used to love it but at the same time we were very sheltered from a lot of things. We were also protected quite a lot.

“I still have that sense of you have to be grateful for what you have and it’s something I try to instil in my children.” Still, his parents’ strict code of conduct did not prevent them listening to the likes of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jnr and it’s something which clearly had a lasting effect on him.

“I grew up listening to all that stuff, the first album I ever bought was Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, I was so excited, I played it over and over again.”

You could say that, at 42, he’s finally hit his stride.

“The minute I come home - and I’m showing my age here - I put my robe on, my slippers, I cook food. We do school runs, life runs as normal as possible and then when you go to work, you go to work.”