From Vogue model to the I’m A Celeb jungle: How Kate Fischer became Tziporah Malkah
SHE was engaged to James Packer and a pin-up model in the ‘90s. Now she’s rolling around with worms in the jungle.
SHE’S appeared on the cover of Vogue four times, starred alongside Hugh Grant in a hit film and was once engaged to billionaire James Packer.
But now Tziporah Malkah, formerly known as Kate Fischer, is back in the spotlight as a contestant on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!, a reality show famous for featuring D-listers looking for a career revival.
Malkah, 42, made her reappearance on national television by being spun around in a box filled with insects and had to fill in fellow contestants on what host Dr Chris Brown called “her previous life”.
At age 14, she won the Dolly Covergirl of the Year competition and was touted as the next Elle Macpherson. The Vogue cover girl later starred alongside Portia de Rossi and Hugh Grant in the Australian film Sirens, two INXS music videos, as well as the soap opera Echo Point.
A portrait of her by Australian painter Paul Newton was a finalist in the prestigious Archibald Prize exhibition - the painting is believed to now be in James Packer’s private collection.
So what is she doing now, where did it all go wrong, and why is she suddenly back in the public eye? This is how she explained it on Monday night’s show.
“I got outed recently in a tabloid magazine, dressed in a bedsheet collecting my mail and I looked absolutely hideous,” she said, referring to Woman’s Day, who published unflattering shots of her outside her home in Melbourne’s leafy Toorak. Malkah had been on the cover of Woman’s Day before, in 1997, looking glamorous in a crotchet bathing suit.
“I was dragged back into the spotlight when I was quite happy being a little hermit doing my nursing job,’ she told fellow contestant Ash Pollard. Malkah is now a student training to be a nurse and works the night shift in a hospital looking after elderly patients with dementia and other mental illnesses.
“They’d been stalking me for nine weeks, they paid a photographer $10,000 to stalk me and they waited until I looked as hideous as possible. The photographer must have been like ‘Thank you God! This is the money shot.’ It was meant to humiliate me,” she said.
“When they did a second story the next week, with me my work uniform going, ‘Twice as big, twice as happy’, I just thought ‘You know what? Up yours’. So I did a story for the opposing mag in my underwear. A photoshoot in knickers and putting lipstick on and stuff ... Suddenly all the paps disappeared.”
Since those magazine stories, Malkah has set up public Facebook and Instagram accounts and agreed to several in-depth interviews, where she revealed personal details about her past.
WHAT’S WITH THE NAME?
On Monday night’s show, former MKR contestant Pollard asked Malkah what we were all thinking: “What does your name mean?”
Apparently it means “bird” in Hebrew. Her family is Jewish (her mother is NSW member for Goulburn Pru Goward) but has not practised Judaism for many years.
“I was given a gentile name to be in the street, but at home I’ve always been Tziporah. I’ve just decided to reclaim it,” Malkah said.
“If anyone calls me ‘Kate’, ‘Zippy’ or ‘Zip’, they’ve got three strikes and they’re out. I’ll let them know.”
She was born Katherine Helen Fischer, but legally changed her name to Tziporah Malkah in her early 20s. It’s a family name passed down from her grandmother.
In the ‘About Me’ section on her public Facebook page, she renounces her birth name.
“Tziporah is how I wish to be addressed,” she wrote. “You won’t get far with Kate - it is not my name and it is disrespectful for people to be wilfully rude and ignore this simple request.”
HER RELATIONSHIP WITH JAMES PACKER
The pair dated in the mid-90s for five years and had a two-year engagement, before separating in 1998. Last November she told KIIS FM’s Kyle and Jackie O the split was mutual.
“It was just talking about the time that we needed to spend together and he just said, ‘My job’s too stressful and if I need to go off and do whatever I want I need to be able to do that,’ and I said, ‘That’s not the sort of marriage that I want.’ It was sort of mutual in a way,” she said.
After they broke up, Malkah claims she took $500,000 of jewellery she had been given by Packer over the years and threw it into the ocean.
“I thought, ‘they come from the earth and back to the earth shall they go,’ so I chucked them all in the ocean. It was a powerful moment but now I’m like, oh crap.”
She said the best part of their relationship was when she got to spend time with a relaxed Packer, but added, “he’d very rarely relax because he has a highly stressful job.”
One of her fondest memories from their time together was when they went on a romantic holiday in Bali, but it came at a cost.
“The best time we ever spent was when I put my foot down,” she said.
“It was Easter time and all the mates were expecting the first class trip to Bali. And I just said, ‘No, no one’s coming, it’s just going to be the two of us.’ Of course they all hated me after that.”
Malkah went on to blame Packer’s posse for ruining their relationship.
“I think he got under a lot of pressure from his mates,” she said.
“You think they didn’t like you?” Jackie O asked.
“Well no, because I was the one that was cutting off their good times,” Malkah replied.
Malkah also revealed the mind games she would play with Packer to patch things up after they’d had disagreements.
“Sometimes we’d fight on the telephone and he’d hang up, that is his pattern very much,” she said.
“He’d usually call back within a day but for about three days he didn’t call me and I started getting a bit worried. So I called him and I said, ‘Thanks for the flowers.’ And he said, ‘What flowers?’ And I said, ‘Oh you mean they weren’t from you.’ And he went, ‘haha very funny.’ And everything was normal but I had to kind of trick him and let him pretend that someone else was after me even though there were no flowers.”
HER WEIGHT LOSS BATTLES
Malkah is open about the fact that at 118.5kg, her doctor has classified her as “morbidly obese”. Her weight has made her the target of ridicule on social media, with some criticising her for not wearing a bra in the jungle.
“I’m going to lose at least 20kg, hopefully much more. I’m way too heavy and it’s time to trim down,” she told New Idea last year.
“This is doctor’s orders — he says I’m morbidly obese. My blood pressure is way too high and I’m likely to die prematurely unless I lose weight. So my life depends on this. I’m ready!”
“I don’t advocate fatness or thinness, but some of us fight the good fight in regards to our weight all the time. It can be mentally all-consuming and very draining- particularly if there are other stresses and distractions going on in one’s life.”
Her night shift work means her eating and sleeping patterns are all over the place.
“When I first get home at, say, 8am, I’m exhausted, but also still a bit wired from work, which by its nature is often pretty harrowing,” she told the magazine.
“So I settle alone in front of the telly, sip a couple of vodkas, and maybe a bottle of wine, and eat cheese. I know it’s not healthy, and I often feel really down about it. I would like to think there’s a lot more to my future.”
Admitting she’s always been a “yoyo dieter” who struggled with weight, Malkah also admitted she secretly underwent lapband surgery ten years ago.
“But it didn’t work. It works for a lot of people, but not for me. So a couple of years later I had the band removed,” she said. “It actually left me with a scarred stomach. Sometimes if I eat too quickly, I’m sick.”
Former I’m A Celeb contestants Julie Goodwin and Chrissy Swan both lost significant amounts of weight when they were in the jungle. With a diet of mostly rice and beans, it’s possible Malkah could achieve a similar body transformation this season.
rebecca.sullivan@news.com.au
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