Peter Andre vs Katie Price: two superpower rogue states go to war

Peter Andre and Katie Price. Photograph: Geoffrey Robinson/Brian Rasic

During the Battle of Stalingrad, both opposing generals developed debilitating nervous conditions. Paulus, the German commander, became plagued by an ungovernable tic in his eye, while his Russian counterpart, Chuikov, exhibited such a severe case of eczema that his hands had to be swaddled in bandages most of the time.

And so to Katie Price and Peter Andre. Lost in Showbiz cannot speculate on the crippling twitches that must soon claim this divorcing pair, but claim them they surely must. Just as house-to-house fighting in the bloodiest battle in human history was so entrenched that the Germans joked despairingly that they had taken the kitchen but were still fighting for the living room, so the marital sundering of this gold-effect couple threatens to lay waste, if not to an entire generation, then certainly to whole tiers of the newsstands.

If you are one of those people who still imagines they can stand idly by as two reality superpowers threaten to tear each other to shreds, you are strongly urged to rethink that position. Frankly, Katie and Peter aren't superpower states in the cold war, Russia-and-America sense, rubbing along expensively but essentially peaceably under the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. No, they are superpower rogue states, who don't play by any rules, and whose willingness to press any number of nuclear buttons any number of times a week makes Kim Jong-il look like Buddha.

The fact that UN peacekeepers have yet to get involved in their divorce speaks further volumes about the moral paralysis of that international body, as Jordan and Peter embark on what can only be seen as a "moving on" arms race. Oh, they're moving on all right. They're moving on all the way to Armageddon, and this week saw the most significant escalation of conflict since the split.

Peter released an angsty single and video featuring a Jordan lookalike. Katie's armed response consisted of parading her new bloke, then clambering on stage at the civil partnership of her makeup artist and explaining to guests that Peter was "a fucking arsehole". Peter retaliated by massing troops on his eastern border in the form of a £1.5m contract to write a family cookbook (yes, really). Plus he is also going to speak in a "masterclass" at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV festival later this month (well done, everybody).

And now . . . well, it's Adlai Stevenson at the UN all over again as Katie's plans for dominance just went missile-sized. She has launched her own TV production company, whose first project will be a fly-on-the-wall show following her in the wake of her marriage breakdown.

Finally, the first steps toward vertical integration – and it surely won't be long before madam acquires the satellite that enables the show to be broadcast, which will become the first piece of space hardware to be painted bubblegum pink.

And why shouldn't she buy ITV2? One always gets the feeling it is ITV's black ops channel, of which its executives would deny all knowledge were it stumbled on by anyone they knew socially. Frankly, ITV2 would be naff-all without Jordan, unless you count those X Factor support shows such as the Xtra Factor, which I suppose we have to on the basis that they are in effect a PFI response to the need for care in the community. If they're watching that, they're not binge drinking/fighting/killing – and you can have that argument for your next public service broadcasting whinge, Grade.

Back to Katie, though, for whom owning her own means of production seems the historically appropriate step. After all, if you had to name another creative figure who exuded such extraordinary control over a property's material and direction you would probably cite Louis B Mayer. But when you consider that Katie is not merely the designing intelligence behind that property, but its on-screen star, the only real parallel is Orson Welles.

As with Welles, though, the question will be how her later career plays out from an early, stellar start. Will Jordan's trajectory continue, or will she wind up mired in vast, largely unedited film projects, her insistence on creative control and the difficulty of raising finances leaving her to rail that Steven Spielberg was happy to fork out $50,000 for the Rosebud sled, but wouldn't give her a dime toward Katie and Not Peter: Behind Bars, a sprawling epic set in the world of cagefighting?

I cannot give you firm answers. I can only advise you not to give up on her. For Lost in Showbiz's money, Katie may well have given us her Kane, but she has yet to give us her Touch of Evil. And to that we must look forward. Even if it will open with a three-and-a-half minute tracking shot that will begin with a shadowy figure placing a bomb beneath Peter's Cadillac Escalade, and end with a couple of ITV2 arrivistes – probably Jack Osbourne and his girlfriend – kissing. The fate of Peter and his Escalade? My darlings, that will be for Jordan to investigate – or rather to frame someone for. She plays a corrupt police captain in this one. Don't miss it!