Katie Price set for High Court battle with ex-husband Alex Reid

Katie Price is set for a High Court battle with ex-husband Alex Reid over claims she shared “sexual” images of him with a television show audience.

The 43-year-old cage fighter is bringing legal action against the former glamour model over claims she shared photographs and video of a “sexual nature” which feature him.

Reid claims Price showed footage of him to a 40-strong audience on the television programme Celebrity Big Brother’s Bit On The Side on January 9 last year.

At a hearing in London on Friday, Reid’s lawyers said Price, 40, currently has no legal representatives after failing to pay her former solicitors.

Reid attended the brief hearing, to deal with preliminary issues ahead of the trial, but Price was not present.

His lawyers told Master Gidden, the judge overseeing the case, that they have had no response from Price to recent correspondence.

Patrick Harrington QC said: “Solicitors for the defendant are now off the record, she has not put them in funds.

“We understand she acts in person now, but does not appear today.

“Our best information is that she is in Ibiza, but we are all here and we invite the court to proceed with this matter.”

The judge set Reid’s legal costs budget for the trial, which will go ahead some time after October, at £400,000.

He was told Price’s defence costs will be an estimated £314,000.

Following a High Court hearing in May last year, Mr Justice Jay granted Reid an injunction to prevent Price sharing “private and confidential information” about him.

The court heard four witnesses allege they saw the footage as Price held her mobile phone up in front of audience members while she was a guest on the television chat show.

Lawyers acting for Price at that time said she denied showing intimate footage of Reid or having any such footage in her possession.

They told the court she accepted that she said to audience members, during a “very lighthearted” discussion that the video was of Reid, but in fact it was a video she had downloaded from YouTube earlier that day.

Granting the injunction, Mr Justice Jay said: “What I am urging the parties to do is frankly to sort this out, because the costs are frankly absurd in the context of what this is about.”

Price married Reid at a ceremony in Las Vegas in 2010 and they divorced the following year.

The mother-of-five, who was once estimated to be worth around £40 million, has been embroiled in a number of court cases over the past six months.

She eventually reached a deal with creditors to avoid bankruptcy in December last year following a number of hearings at a specialist insolvency court in London.

In January, magistrates heard she was unable to immediately pay a £1,100 fine after she was banned from driving for a second time for driving whilst disqualified and without insurance.

She received another driving ban and a £1,500 fine in February following a drink driving conviction, after she was found by police slumped in her pink Range Rover while almost twice the limit.

A judge criticised her for failing to attend a court hearing in March over an allegation she used threatening behaviour outside a school during a row with her ex-husband Kieran Hayler’s girlfriend.

Price, who lives in Dial Post near Horsham, West Sussex, is facing two charges of using threatening and abusive words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress in Shipley on September 6 last year.

She is due to stand trial at Horsham Magistrates’ Court on June 3.