KATE GOSSELIN: HOW SHE FOOLED THE WORLD - THE RISE AND FALL OF A REALITY TV QUEEN (75 page)

August 2006

Kate said that she had so much fun with Jamie and said that she is such a blessing! Than added, during nap, Jamie mopped the floor and folded the laundry.

August 2006

It was a sad morning because Jamie left!!!!! Kate added that Jamie was the very best helper ever! She made Kate think about how much easier her life would be if they had a part time helper/cook/childcare provider!!!!! And Kate finally added about her ‘best friend,’ She doesn’t annoy me or get in my way.

Based on these journal entries, it would appear that the main prerequisite for being one of Kate’s “friends” is that you also have to mop floors, fold laundry and do other chores for Kate.

In her journal, Kate said that she and Jamie care for their kids the same way. Does that mean that Jamie Cole Ayers beats and humiliates her children as well? Maybe she does, because we’ve seen the tabloid photo of Jamie grabbing and yelling at one of the sextuplets right in front of Kate’s garage on Heffner Road – in front of the gawking paparazzi.

Well I would question
your
judgment, Kate, in who
you
allow to be close to your children. I question the steady stream of revolving-door “helpers” and babysitters I have seen entering the children’s lives in the short time I’ve been watching.

I wonder how well Kate
really
knows Jamie Cole Ayers, her best friend in the world. I wonder if Kate ever saw the email or the topless photo that Jamie sent to her husband Jon as she was trying to seduce him – while Kate and Jon were still married.

I’ve seen them.

I have them.

Here’s Katie setting the record straight via Twitter. Why she doesn’t just ignore these
kinds of tweets instead of feeling the need to tell outright lies is beyond me. This tweet came almost a year after Jamie’s comments aired on the final episode of
Kate Plus Ei8ht
.

xxxxx @Kateplusmy8
I was wondering if you ever feel like fame got to you? You changed so much that you seem like a completely other person…

lol SEEM(what u c)& TRUTH r 2different things! I am same albeit I’ve learned a lot! Friends say ‘ur same old Kate’ – good2hear!

Kate must not have been paying attention during the final episode of
Kate Plus Ei8ht
when Kate’s absolute best friend in the world, Jamie Cole Ayers, took to the interview chair to share a few final thoughts with the viewing audience.

“What’s funny, one of the last episodes they showed some flashbacks of Kate. That’s the Kate that I met at Reading Hospital. I saw the softer and the love spark in her eye. Now… I see her but it’s more TV, it’s more, what am I wearing? How skinny can I be?
It’s not the Kate that I used to know.
I always say to her, you’re not Angelina Jolie. And she gets mad.”

And that did it for Best Friend Forever, Jamie Cole Ayers.

It looks like Jamie was voted off Gosselin Island and banished from Gosselin Land forever after Kate saw Jamie speaking negatively about her during the RV and final episodes of
Kate Plus Ei8ht.
The show was canceled, and so were the paid help/friends, Ashley and Jamie.

But wait! It appears that by July 2012, there was
reconciliation between Kate and Jamie. In her never-ending quest to prove to the world that she really, really does have friends, Kate tweeted like a schoolgirl that Jamie was coming to visit. She tried her best to alert the paps that a photo op would be happening, but there were simply no takers.

So Kate tweeted a photo of Jamie doing what Jamie does best for Kate…being a paid employee, cleaning Kate’s house for her, and watching her children while Kate runs important errands such as going to the tanning salon and picking up her mail.

This falls under the ‘ways your friends offer to help when they visit’ category..
http://t.co/0Mni6FUx

The photo Kate tweeted shows Jamie standing barefoot on Kate’s kitchen counter, wiping grease and dust off of Kate’s giant range hood. What exactly was the point? Yes, Kate, we get it. The only way anyone can be your friend is if they clean your house, or do your laundry, or fix your tractor, or fix your garage door, etc., etc., etc.

Those aren’t friends, Kate. Those are paid workers.

Kate also tweeted this while Jamie was staying at the Gosselin house:

All settled back in at home… Let the chaos increase…..my kids plus 3 more at r house w only 2 adults this week!It’s A LOT louder here!:)

In case you missed that, Kate just let it slip that there were ONLY TWO adults watching the kids that week, meaning her normal babysitters got a few days off because her “friend” Jamie was in town to do all the work for them. A beautiful friendship, indeed.

“Nobody has had the public recognition that Kate has.”

– Steve Neild

Steve Neild is Kate Gosselin’s bodyguard, travel companion, manager and pack mule. This chapter will give you some background
information on Steve Neild and discuss his involvement with the Gosselins. The following information was taken directly from his security company’s website:

Steve K. Neild

Executive Vice President

Prudential Associates

Steve Neild served with the New Zealand Police Department for 19 years, during which time he lead the special operations section and focused on counter-terrorism and dignitary protection.

His special expertise is in VIP protection and major event security planning.

He has been the central point of contact and liaison with marketing and major corporate management operations, local police, various military representatives, and with government and international intelligence agencies.

Mr. Neild also has substantial experience in law enforcement and counter-terrorism operations and management of large critical facilities, such as Auckland International Airport in Auckland, New Zealand.

This resume certainly makes Steve sound like an impressive fellow who has been involved in some high-level security operations. But times change, and today he follows Kate Gosselin around carrying her purse and luggage. If you watch Steve when he is with Kate, he does not exhibit any of the behaviors typical of a bodyguard protecting someone. He comports himself more like a companion. So how does one go from working security assignments of grave import to babysitting Kate Gosselin and doing the extremely dangerous work of carrying her shopping bags?

Perhaps Steve just wanted to retire from the stress of serious security work and opted to go for easy money. A lot of people retire and then take a part-time job pushing shopping carts at the local supermarket to maintain health benefits, etc.

Steve Neild was originally hired by Discovery to protect the Gosselin kids while Kate and Jon were traveling for filming. Here’s how Kate described it:

Kate said that it came to her attention as a mother thinking if she was going to put kids out there in public, she needed to be responsible and do what she needed to do to keep everyone safe. It was her request that they started traveling with security. Kate said of Steve, “He really has the history, as far as where we’ve been to now because it’s night and day.”

Kate’s expressed reasoning is completely understandable. We have three kids, and I’m a nervous wreck keeping an eye on them and keeping them safe when we travel, even somewhere local. But somewhere along the line, what began as security for the Gosselin children morphed into Steve becoming a private man-servant and handler for Kate.

TLC provided another bodyguard, named Luke, to Kate Gosselin. Luke looks like an NFL defensive tackle. He’s huge. Luke is what a good bodyguard should look like. Luke would make anyone think twice before trying to harm someone he was guarding. Steve Neild on the other hand, not so much. When I see Steve, I just want to run up to him and give him a big hug. I’ve stood next to Steve Neild and had a
pleasant conversation with him. He’s very personable and likeable. I’m not a giant guy, but I didn’t find Steve to be even a little bit intimidating. He looks like he’d be fun to have a few drinks with.

It made sense to have a bodyguard to look out for the safety of the children, especially when they were traveling so much and were subjected to interactions with strangers, but why, though, does Kate feel that she needs a personal bodyguard when she travels alon
e, and even to this day, in 2013? I watched her closely for more than 2 years and I never saw an instance of anything remotely threatening happening to her. Nobody in her hometown hassles her at all. If anything, the occasional house mom or some teenage girls would come up to her to say “hi” or to ask to take a picture with her. I have never, EVER, even heard anyone say or yell a nasty word at her. Yet she feels the need to pay a bodyguard $800-plus a day to travel with her.

In 2010, on the “Inside Kate’s World” edition of
Kate Plus 8
, Steve Neild said of Kate:

"She has been betrayed by some of the closest people to her."

"I've had threats left in her mailbox, threats left on the front doorstep, so there's a lot of stuff that members of the public don't know. There's stuff Kate doesn't even know, the contents of these emails, that haven't been shared with her. From a security perspective, we look at all that."

"The other side of that now is the media interest. In the last 18 months, it's got to the stage where she can't go to California; she can't go to New York, without 20 or 30 paparazzi following her. It's dangerous."

Steve Neild says he has protected royal families, presidents and elected heads of state during his career. If these claims are true, it makes his statements that none of them have compared to Gosselin and “nobody has had the public recognition that Kate has” simply laughable. He is saying that Kate Gosselin has more public recognition than the British Royal Family and former President Bill Clinton. He is either delusional, or he is just trying to market himself as the protector of the most important woman on earth. In either case, his claim is ridiculous. I find it strange that someone who is supposedly as respected and accomplished as Steve Neild, according to his company’s website, would spend the bulk of his time, in the prime of his career, following a mean-spirited, D-list, has-been, former reality TV personality around to the grocery store and to get her hair done.

Discovery paid for Steve’s services only when he was traveling with Kate for the show. I have seen, in Kate’s own writing, lists of travel dates and details where she makes special notations of when Discovery paid for Steve and the days that she was actually responsible for his salary.

Kate and her manager also included a stipulation for Steve’s services into Kate’s contracts when traveling for book signings, speaking engagements or various television interviews, etc.

Steve’s constant presence has caused much speculation about the nature of his relationship with Kate. I have heard all of the rumors that he and Kate are having an affair, and I have seen them together so I can draw my own conclusions. I don’t know anything for certain, however, so I am not going to spend too much time speculating on the subject. All I can do is tell what I know and have observed.

I know that Steve Neild is a liar. I know this because on the first episode of the new season of
Kate Plus Ei8ht
, in yet another desperate attempt to create drama and get ratings, Steve Neild, himself, took to the interview couch to defend Kate’s need for personal security. He stated, while looking us right in the eye, that everywhere Kate goes, there are 20 to 30 paparazzi always following her. That was not true.

Having personally followed Kate Gosselin every day for an extended period of time, in Pennsylvania and beyond, as a writer and a working paparazzo, I can tell you that, after the summer of 2009, there was only one dedicated paparazzo who followed Kate every day, or just at times when he felt like it. He lives closer to Kate’s house than he does to New York City where the real action is, so it made better financial sense for him to photograph her than to drive 2 hours each way to the city.

At the height of the Jon and Kate media frenzy in the summer of 2009, there were, at most, 10 or 12 paps taking pictures on any given day. Holidays and the kids’ birthdays or a special occasion would draw more, even television crews, but just for a single day. I can tell you, again from personal experience, that the paps that came to Pennsylvania to cover the Gosselins are of a different breed than those you see on the streets of Hollywood swarming celebrities. These guys were professional, courteous and for the most part, polite. I found it offensive when one or two first-timers would surround Kate and the kids at the bus stop and get too close, and very offensive when they would ask her rude questions on video in front of the kids. Those paps didn’t have kids, so they didn’t get why it was such a bad thing. But there certainly was never a threat from any of the paps.