Noughties icon Jodie Marsh has swapped belt bras for muddy wellies on her controversial farm.
The TV personality, 45, rose to fame in the early 2000s as a glamour model, notorious for her barely-there outfits and viciously feuding with fellow lads’ mags heavyweight Katie Price. But two decades later, Jodie has shunned red carpets and paparazzi in favour of a quieter, simple life herding animals.
In 2020, Essex-born Jodie opened Fripps Farm and dedicated her time to helping creatures in need. But it’s not been all smooth sailing on the farm as legal battles, suspected poisionings and tearful feuds with her neighbours have cast a dark shadow on the project.
Earlier this year, the former model appeared in court over an animal licence decision, as she appealed against the refusal of an application to Uttlesford District Council to keep lemurs at her private sanctuary.
Here, the Mirror takes a look at Jodie’s life now away from the spotlight and her forgotten past – including her millionaire parents.
New laid-back look and farm woes
The staunch animal rights activist is now enjoying life on her farm after launching her own animal sanctuary Fripps Farm in Great Dunmow, Essex. As well as sheep and donkies, she looks after the likes of alpacas, emus, monkeys and reptiles. In a recent snap, Jodie looks unrecognisable as she posed at her sanctuary with pals including EastEnders star Jessie Wallace. Jodie was seen make-up-free with her bleached hair tied back into a ponytail while wearing a jumper which read: “Stop Eating Dead Animals”.
In the early days of the farm, Jodie turned to OnlyFans and glamour modelling to help pay the bills. She told Mail Online: “Before we became a C.I.C (Community Interest Company) I was funding it all myself and I did it by doing OnlyFans. The perimeter fence alone for securing the animals cost £60,000 so I had to pay for that with OnlyFans. My boobs paid for the fences and they also paid the staff’s wages!”
It’s not all smiles though as the farm has been marred in controversy since it opened its doors. Jodie recently broke down in tears as she accused her neighbours ‘trying to destroy her animal sanctuary’. Her neighbours are reportedly not happy with the smallholding as Jodie claims they shouted: “We don’t want f*****g you here over the fence”, the first day she moved in. Hitting back at her neighbours on Instagram, the model accused them of ‘attacking’ her and added: “There’s no point with these trolls. If everyone were to come through these doors and see what we do, they would realise that my whole life is dedicated to these animals.”
Another disturbing development came just days after Jodie broke down over the dispute with her neighbours, as she now fears someone is poisoning her animals. Mourning the death of one of her sheep, Jodie told her fans on social media was going to end up “hurting people” if she discovered foul play as she updated her followers on Wilf, one this year’s lambs.
“The vet is saying it’s not a normal case of bloat and he hasn’t got bloat as you have to gorge on something to get bloat and he hasn’t,” Jodie said as she shared Wilf was refusing to eat and something from diarrhoea. She added how her animals’ diets are “carefully managed”. She continued: “At this stage, I am not ruling out poisoning and nor is the vet. And I am literally going to start hurting people because the police aren’t helping me, the council aren’t helping me – nobody’s helping me – and now we have a sheep that is dying in our arms and I am going to lose my s**t.”
Jodie then returned to her Instagram Stories in tears and broke the sad news that the sheep had died. “We did everything for him,” the former glamour model told her followers as she thought back the tears. She then shared her plans to have a full autopsy because “there was nothing wrong with him – he was bouncing around. He was so fine and then all of a sudden went downhill. We are in bits here. There is just no reason for it at all.”
Sad split from builder
The former glamour model’s farm troubles come after she revealed she’d split from her builder boyfriend Mark, just three months after claiming he was her “first adult” relationship. Back in March, she posted a series of modelling photos to Instagram, writing: “I think this sums up why I’ll never find a life partner.
“I want a lovely calm, happy, peaceful life, rescuing animals. I want to lay on the sofa and read books and listen to music. I want to plant rose bushes in the garden and I’m actually quite boring. I need a man who understands that my life isn’t all glam and craziness. Someone who wants to chill with me and realises that I can be quite boring but who enjoys the quiet times. I need a man who understands I live a simple life in the countryside.'”
Mark worked as a builder at her animal sanctuary and back in December, Jodie told Mail Online she was in her first “adult relationship”. “I’ve had a lot of ag with boyfriends. I’ve not had a good time in the past with men. I’ve been targeted by con men who have pretended to be one thing and then, and then actually their true colours have shown and they’re not who they say they are at all. But also I’ve made bad choices in the past, but we all do when it’s matters of the heart,” she said.
Her split comes after two failed marriages. She first tied the knot to James Peacock in 2007 after the pair met on the reality show Totally Jodie Marsh: Who’ll Take Her Up the Aisle? However they parted ways just two months later.
In 2016, she was then married for eight months to James Placido, whom she eventually left after claiming he had been making “monetary demands”. The former model was also engaged to DJ David Doyle in 2006 after just 11 days of dating, but the couple called it quits just weeks later.
Mum’s heartbreaking death
Away from her relationship troubles, Jodie has experienced tough heartbreak in her family as she lost her beloved mum Kristina to cancer in September 2020. Taking to Twitter to share the devastating news, she wrote: “My beautiful, classy, kind, generous, clever, incredible mum passed away this morning. She was my best friend and the strongest woman I know.
“She was the best mum in the world and the best human you could ever wish to know. I love you so so much mum. How do I do this without you?” Just four months before, Jodie told how her mum had been ‘turfed out of hospital’ because of the coronavirus pandemic despite battling an aggressive form of cancer, and admitted she was ‘fading fast’ at home.
In January 2021, she bravely shared her grief with fans, revealing she was struggling to cope under the weight of her heartache. “Today has been a rough day for me. I’ve felt angry and frustrated all day, until eventually I had a melt down/outburst and then deep crying sobs. I am really struggling today,” she told her Instagram followers.
“I miss mum so much and it feels like as the world carries on; I’m supposed to just be normal and fine when I don’t feel it at all. Inside I’m broken and trying every day to hold it together. I’m also trying to be strong for those around me. I know I don’t have to be but I WANT to be. Anyway, I don’t want sympathy, I just wanted to share how I’m feeling.”
The reality star added: “I’ve been crying since about 3pm and I can’t stop. And that’s ok. It’s ok to cry and it’s normal to grieve. It’s good to talk about it.”
Forgotten past
The former model was raised by millionaire parents John and Kristina Marsh, who made their money in the scaffolding business and home for the family was a countryside Tudor-style mansion, close to Brentwood in Essex. After achieving 11 GCSEs at A and B grades and three straight As at A level at the £10,000-a-year Brentwood School, academic Jodie had hoped to became a vet or a lawyer.
Though she lived a very privileged childhood, the star was badly bullied at school for her thick glasses and her broken nose, caused by a hockey accident. In her Channel 5 documentary Bullied: My Secret Past, Jodie told how her tormentors would kick footballs at her head and leave her cowering in the library at lunch.
The bullying was so bad she thought about taking her own life. “My bullying at school changed my life,” the former glamour model told This Morning. “After I broke my nose in a hockey accident, they started picking on my nose and then I got called ugly and big nose, dodgy nose and all sorts of things right the way through secondary school.
“By the end of my time secondary school I didn’t have a single friend there. I was a complete loner at school. I contemplated suicide loads of times.”
The star said her experiences at school made her determined to become a model to ‘prove to my bullies that I wasn’t ugly’. Her rise to fame began on the ITV reality show Essex Wives, when she was working as a pole dancer at Stringfellows and living in a house her dad had built for her in the grounds of his estate.
Jodie’s late mum Kristina, told how she was accepting of her daughter’s job in the programme. “People found it fascinating,” she told ESPN. “My mum and dad have their own scaffolding business and they had all of this money and houses, and I was a lap dancer. I wanted to earn my own money. It was good money at the time, about 10,000 pounds a week in cash.”
Katie Price olive branch
In 2021, Katie Price reignited her decades-old feud with Jodie by branding her a ‘nobody’ in her bombshell book, Harvey And Me. The former glamour model took aim at her longtime nemesis in the pages of her autobiography, calling her ‘the lowest of the low’ for dating Katie’s ex after she met Peter Andre on I’m A Celebrity.
“I met my first husband Peter Andre when I was in the jungle,” Katie wrote. “I had a couple of relationships when Harvey was a baby, and I was with a guy called Scott Sullivan at the time. But you know me there’s always some drama, I had actually split up with him just before I did the show, so it wasn’t just like I bunny hopped to another man.
“And then Scott went to the lowest of the low and got with Jodie Marsh.” Over the years there has been some major mud-slinging between the two women, with Katie once claiming Jodie slept with “nearly all my leftovers and not one of them wanted you.”
She also mocked Jodie’s appearance, comparing her rival’s nose to ‘a builder’s elbow’. In retaliation, Jodie hit out at Katie’s ‘Bond villain teeth’, retweeting a meme of Katie’s gnashers with a series of laughing emojis.
But in a turn of events, earlier this year in April 2024, Jodie showed her support to the mum-of-five in one of her latest Instagram posts. Katie shared a video where she talked about a product that helps her cope with stress.
Jodie commented: “I use it too it’s amazing.” Fans flooded her comment with likes as they appeared to take the remark as a sign they could become friends. It was the first time Jodie broke her silence after Katie appeared to extend an olive branch.
Speaking on her Katie Price Show podcast, she said: “I’ve never had a problem with her [Jodie] and I always say to people, we’d probably get on because we both love animals, horses. We’ve both been through the mill. I don’t actually have a problem with her and never had and if she reached out. Imagine if me and her did an OnlyFans shoot, that would be one for the thing wouldn’t it. I wouldn’t rule that out, if Jodie wanted to do an OnlyFans shoot.”
