Let us start from a novel standpoint. Let us assume that, all things considered, the continuing celebrity status of Kerry Katona is a positive phenomenon, and that the launch of her own reality TV show Kerry Katona: Crazy in Love is the moment for us all to admit it. After all, it's not as if Katona is some cosseted, spoilt, privately educated middle-class kid throwing away her privileges in an orgy of self-gratification.

According to her biography, Katona's first memory is, at the age of 4, discovering her mother's attempted suicide, and Katona had passed through four sets of foster parents before reaching her teens. In terms of advantageous psychosocial development, the infant Katona might as well have been put in a small craft of bulrushes coated in pitch, and floated down the Nile. At least then she might have had a chance of leading the Hebrews out of Egypt, and living until the age of 120, instead of shagging Brian McFadden of Westlife.

By the age of 19 she was in Atomic Kitten, and famous. I recall the band's first appearance on The Big Breakfast - or, more specifically, I recall Katona: she came across as one of those teenage girls you see standing on tables in clubs, hollering at people. The ones who blow you away with their energy, until you realise they're super-fast burning and desperately projecting outwards, like a distress signal.

She resigned from Atomic Kitten at the age of 21 - pregnant by Brian McFadden of Westlife - and that was, to all intents and purposes, the end of her productive, working life. Since then, Katona has earned her money from Iceland adverts, I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!, autobiographies and spreads in OK! Just being herself, in other words. Making her life the product - the apogee of which career structure is a reality TV show and, hence, Crazy in Love.

In the first episode, we see Katona and her current husband, Mark Croft, find out the sex of their unborn child during a scan; Katona doing a photoshoot in her knickers and bra, and Katona and Croft arguing. Important themes for the show are established early on - namely that Katona won't really feature her children on camera (not after they're born, anyway: the foetus is all over the place), she and Croft row a lot, and Croft farts incessantly. One is left with the impression that, given the upbringing she had, Katona is - harried-looking, constantly on-call nanny notwithstanding - at least around and not committing suicide in front of her children, earning a living and holding a relationship together: none of which is to be sneezed at in this day and age.

But what, ultimately, are we all getting out of this? For viewers, Katona's life - with its armed burglaries, front-page miscarriages, custody battles, fist-fights with her mother and rehab - is, as with the lives of Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse, like a snuff version of EastEnders. When it spirals out of control, as it so often does, animals, and people, really are hurt during the making of this film.

For Katona the deal is much more pernicious. While it might initially seem like an amazing deal - a girl with no O levels gets a Ferrari in exchange for a little chat with the papers! Who wouldn't sign up? - you only get the Ferraris while “interesting” (ie, generally unpleasant) things often happen to you. Jordan, uniquely, might have made the transition from selling her life to selling the merchandise of her life - branded perfumes, bras and endless novellas - but she is an aspirational figure: striking, married to a good-looking pop star, and with the cold, calculating survival instinct of a lizard.

Katona, on the other hand, comes across like a soft, woundable child on bipolar medication: permanently preg- nant, sartorially unsettled, and with a dented-looking husband primarily interested in cars and shagging.

“You weren't crap darling,” he says, in episode two, when Katona is in tears after an interview with Jonathan Ross. “You answered the questions ... Adequately.”

It's hard to sell the concept that she's living the dream.

And that's why it's hard, ultimately, to argue that the continuing celebrity status of Kerry Katona is a good thing. Because when emotionally damaged people essentially make their lives a company, and float it on the Stock Exchange, it's not just their business that is deemed to have failed in the event of a crash. It's their whole existence. And that just seems like too high a stake for a television show.

Kerry Katona: Crazy in Love, Sun, MTV One, 10pm

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