Obnoxious Celebrities I’ve Encountered: Katie Hind Reveals All

After two decades as a showbiz journalist, there is one question everyone always wants to ask: ‘Oooh, what are they really like?’ And the truth is, they’re often truly lovely.

Christine and Frank Lampard spring to mind because they’re a genuine and delightful couple who have shown me remarkable personal kindness in the past. Veteran TV host Bradley Walsh is also a gem, while Holly Willoughby is exactly as you’d expect – an absolute sweetheart.

But it isn’t always the case. I’m thrilled to tell people about the good eggs because, quite simply, many of the celebrities I’ve encountered over the years are jaw-droppingly rude. And if you could only see behind the glitzy showbiz mask they put on for the public, you’d likely be shocked.

So let me give you a little taster of the worst offenders. Singer Lily Allen is chief among them. In 2008, she appeared to be slurring and confused while on stage at the GQ Awards – intoxicated by her own fame and perhaps a bit more. Her co-host and one-time mentor Sir Elton John wasn’t impressed, telling the singer: ‘I could still snort you under the table.’

The testy verbal exchange was the talk of the awards and, as a showbiz reporter, I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to approach her at the after-party at the Royal Opera House.

Trust me, manners open doors, so it was with the utmost politeness that I asked her how she felt about the fallout.

Dressed in a pretty Dolce & Gabbana floor-length frock with glistening Chopard jewels, she looked demure – until, that is, she opened her mouth. ‘F*** off,’ she spat. ‘I hate journalists, go away.’

It didn’t end there. Some years later I met Lily in notorious Soho celebrity haunt The Groucho Club, where she quite happily revealed that she’d joined fitness club Barry’s Bootcamp to jettison a few pounds ahead of her appearance that summer at Glastonbury festival.

Lily Allen spent years lobbing foul-mouthed and unprompted remarks at me on social media, writes Katie Hind

Noel Fielding made my friend run around after him like she was his personal assistant

Amanda Abbington phoned me on a Sunday afternoon screaming and swearing over what I had written about her turbulent time on Strictly

But when I wrote about our conversation, she took to Twitter, now X, insisting she had never said any of those things and that I was ‘a liar’.

This was just the start. She spent years lobbing foul-mouthed and unprompted remarks at me on social media.

One of these rants prompted her friend, the rapper Professor Green, to join in. He piped up, charmingly, to call me a ‘fat pig-faced c*** of a news whore’.

His comment ignited five, long, upsetting days of me being trolled mercilessly by his fans. Eventually, he accepted the abuse was wrong and privately apologised – but it was only a partial apology, which did not make up for the vitriol he had unleashed. I didn’t accept it, and never will. I had a similar, more recent experience with Paddy McGuinness, but without the apology. Apparently sick of me writing about his marital woes with his ex-wife Christine, he posted on Instagram that I had written ‘lies’.

Again, the troll horde swung into action, attacking me for daring to prick the cheeky chappy image of their hero. And, let me tell you, his followers are vicious.

In general, A-listers handle the Press with more grace. Not so Jude Law. At a film premiere in 2004, he stormed through a room of journalists and refused to speak to us. Ten years later, I met him again while I was interviewing former glamour model Kelly Brook at the Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles.

Dripping with arrogance, he sidled up to Kelly, thinking she’d be bowled over by his star-power. But when she failed to take the bait, he slunk off, and Kelly squealed: ‘Eugh, he f***ing stank.’

Bake Off was ruined for me when Noel Fielding became a presenter. I spent time with him at the beginning of his career in 2005 and watched as he abused the friendship he had with a colleague of mine. He made her run around after him like she was his personal assistant and, one night at a house party, he summoned her to bring him some drinks.

Rapper Professor Green called me a ‘fat pig-faced c*** of a news whore’ on X which led to five days of me being trolled mercilessly by his fans

At a film premiere in 2004 Jude Law stormed through a room of journalists and refused to speak to us

Rugby star Ben Cohen tried to get me kicked out of a hotel by threatening not to pay their hefty bar bill unless I left

Dutifully, she did – only for him to take them and turn his back on her without uttering a word.

They say never meet your childhood heroes, and Chris Tarrant was one of mine. I had grown up listening to his Capital Radio breakfast show while I got ready for school.

Then, at the Capital Gold charity awards back in 2004, when I was in my early 20s, I approached him timidly to see if I could get a story out of him. Looking down at me, he bristled, ‘What do you want?’, before telling me how much he despised the proprietor of the newspaper I then worked for.

His outburst sent Capital Radio’s PR team into a meltdown, and they apologised profusely – though Chris would not, so I’ve never watched or listened to him again.

Sportsmen are a mixed bunch. Take Olympian Bradley Wiggins, London 2012’s superstar cyclist. Seeing him at that year’s GQ Men of the Year awards, where he had been handed the Lifetime Achievement prize, I was met with a foul reception when I tried to ask him about his victory, and he shooed me away. In contrast, I met footballer Ashley Cole on the same night, who was utterly charming.

Not so his former Chelsea teammate John Terry, however. Married to his childhood sweetheart, Toni, he has nevertheless been the subject of many kiss-and-tells over the years.

I couldn’t fathom what these women saw in him, especially when, in 2004, he sent me a string of unwanted and eye-wateringly sexual text messages. So I can’t say that I was too surprised when his relationship with Vanessa Perroncel – the wife of his teammate and close friend Wayne Bridge – was finally exposed.

Manners also deserted rugby player Ben Cohen after I had written that he had left his wife Abby for his Strictly dance partner Kristina Rihanoff.

At the Capital Gold charity awards back in 2004, I approached Chris Tarrant and he bristled, ‘What do you want?’, before telling me how much he despised the proprietor of the newspaper I then worked for

Martine McCutcheon asked me if I was stupid after asking her if she would return to EastEnders

He spotted me in the rooftop bar of a Soho hotel and summoned me to a dark corner before loudly berating me for how much I had upset his children. He, of course, had done nothing wrong.

He and Kristina then tried to get me kicked out of the hotel by threatening not to pay their hefty bar bill unless I left. Obviously, I refused.

Another Strictly horror was actress Amanda Abbington, who phoned me on a Sunday afternoon, screaming and swearing over what I had written about her turbulent time on the show. She threatened to set her lawyers on to me because I had dared to give her former Strictly partner Giovanni Pernice – whom she had accused of all manner of bad behaviour – a fair hearing.

Eventually, Giovanni was cleared of her most serious accusations following a BBC investigation.

Another actress, former EastEnders star Martine McCutcheon, was hardly sweetness personified when I asked if she would ever return to the soap, where she played Tiffany Mitchell. ‘Are you stupid?’ she sneered, ‘Tiffany is dead.’ That another character, Kathy Beale, had recently returned after ‘dying’ in a car crash was lost on McCutcheon, whose knee-jerk reaction was to belittle me.

You’d think that children’s TV presenters would be more approachable, but I was bitterly disappointed when I interviewed Timmy Mallett, whose morning Wacaday show was a staple of my 1980s childhood.

Far from the chirpy ball of energy he appears on TV, I found him to be snippy and arrogant. He barely answered a question before insisting that, in return for a chat, I carry his bags to his car.

Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne’s daughter Kelly, though, is as rude as you would expect. She had once slapped a journalist friend of mine and, when we saw her again during a night out at Soho’s Punk nightclub she threatened to do it again – only this time, she was going to hit me too. We gave her a wide berth for the rest of the evening.

Katie Price is also no angel. On an easyJet flight to Malaga, where she was heading for her first holiday with then-husband Alex Reid, she walked over to where I was sitting and shouted: ‘What the f*** are you doing here? F*** off.’ Her outburst terrified the young boy sitting next to me so much that he burst into tears.

Suffice to say, you have to have a thick skin in my line of work, inadvertently catching celebrities at their foulest.

But they’re not all bad – and Sir Paul McCartney is up there with the best. When I was a student journalist at the University of East Anglia he came to promote a poetry book, so I called his PR to see if he’d talk. Having already turned down the local Press, Sir Paul seemed in no mood to oblige, but he graciously granted my student newspaper an interview.

When I met him at a Norwich hotel, he was surprisingly earthbound for such a stratospheric star, and even let his dinner go cold as we talked.

While James Corden gets a bad rap – sometimes deservedly – he isn’t always such a bad old stick. When I was being trolled by Professor Green, he called me to say he’d had a go at the singer on my behalf. And when my dad was waiting for a heart transplant in 2022, he kept asking for updates.

Another favourite was the adorable, yet troubled, Amy Winehouse. Despite having every spit and cough of her life pored over by the red-top tabloids, she was always willing to chat.

And although she was heavily using drugs towards the end of her life she always remembered my name at a showbiz bash.

Another whose relationship with the Press hasn’t always been easy is England striker Wayne Rooney. You’d expect him to guarded among journalists, even hostile, but he’s been nothing but courteous with me, even once coming to my rescue. At an awards ceremony some years ago, he spotted a woman trying to steal my precious BlackBerry phone while I had my back turned. He challenged her to open her bag and there it was.

I’ve got a lot of time for Steven Gerrard, too. When the Liverpool footballer joined LA Galaxy in 2015, I was ignored by the host at the Press conference, despite trying to ask a question. Afterwards, he apologised and offered me a private interview on the spot.

Former Girls Aloud singer Cheryl Tweedy is also more down-to-earth than you might imagine. She rarely speaks to journalists now, but in our clubbing days – including her London hen do, ahead of marrying Ashley Cole in 2006 – we’d giggle and share our woes. If only all the celebrities I’ve met were all like her.