Kerry Katona said that she required assistance reading and writing until she was in her twenties.
Kerry, now 42, said that Atomic Kitten’s manager had to read restaurant menus to her back in the day.
It wasn’t until she relocated to Ireland in the early 2000s with ex-husband Brian McFadden that she learned to read and write.
Kerry enrolled in typing classes while her husband, Brian, was on tour with Westlife from 2002 to 2004.
Kerry revealed this when speaking with Ireland AM on Virgin Media One.
‘I remember when I first moved to Ireland with Brian, I was pregnant, I couldn’t read or write. I was dyslexic,’ she began.
‘With Brian being on tour all the time, I did a typing course and I taught myself how to read and write properly.’
Muireann O’Connell, the show’s host, was ‘astounded’ to discover that about Kerry.
‘That’s amazing to have done that,’ she praised.
Kerry went on to describe how dyslexia, a learning disability that predominantly impacts the abilities required for correct and fluent word reading and spelling, affected her in the female group.
‘Being in Atomic Kitten, bearing in mind I had four sets of foster parents, three refuges, I went to eight different schools which I was very rarely in because my mum never let me go to school really, I couldn’t even spell the word “orange” at one point,’ she shared.
‘I remember we were in a restaurant with Atomic Kitten and I couldn’t read the restaurant, our manager had to read it for me.’
Kerry added: ‘I’ll never forget, we were in a Mexican restaurant and Liz (McClarnon) ordered fajitas and I was like, “Oh my God, she’s going to eat a dead baby.” Fejitas, fetus. That’s how uneducated I was with food.’
Kerry departed Atomic Kitten in 2001 after being pregnant with her first child, Molly, who is now 21 years old.
After overcoming her dyslexia, she went on to write many books, the most recent of which, Kerry Katona: Whole Again: Love, Life, and Me, was released in 2023.
She is also the mother of four more children from her three marriages.
She and Brian share Lilly-Sue, in addition to Molly.
Heidi Elizabeth and Maxwell Mark are her children with Mark Croft, while Dylan-Jorge is her son with her late spouse George Kay.
In the aftermath of his death, Kerry disclosed in March of this year that her fiancé Ryan Mahoney had adopted DJ as his own daughter.
Kerry’s daughters got a chance to follow in her reality TV footsteps, as one daughter had the option to compete on Love Island.
Lilly-Sue, on the other hand, turned down the ITV dating programme not once, but twice.
While Kerry originally pushed Lilly to visit the villa, her daughter ultimately chose against taking part in the show because it’s “just not her.”
