- Jo’Anne Patton, 32, earns up to £36,000 a year for six appearances a month
- Also works as a PA and makes appearances as Kim at parties
- Spends £1390 a month on beauty treatments to maintain look
- Credits good figure with ‘a lot of Nandos and squats’
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With a sprawling Californian mansion, a Vogue cover and a personal worth of over £40m, Kim Kardashian hasn’t done too badly for a reality television star. But now the buxom blonde – formerly brunette – has garnered such status that Kardashian lookalikes are cashing in on their likeness of her – to the tune of thousands. Jo’Anne Patton, 32, has had so much success as a Kim Kardashian lookalike in Leeds that she estimates earning up to £36,000 over the course of the year for just six appearances per month. The lookalike, who currently works as a PA, said: ‘For some events, for example a teenager having a Sweet Sixteen or another birthday party, then people pay well into the hundreds for a Kim Kardashian appearance because she is their idol.
She’s very popular in that age group because she’s such a good role model’, Miss Patton added. ‘At the moment I have a full time job and do the Kim Kardashian stuff as a side hobby, but now because there’s the appetite out there for her, it’s something I’d really like to do full time and create a business out of it.’
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Kim Kardashian is a 34-year-old American socialite and TV personality who shot to fame after she starred with her family in the reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians – commissioned shortly after a sex tape of her was leaked in 2007. Kardashian is a somewhat controversial celebrity, not least because of her infamous bottom/waist ratio and rumours of cosmetic surgery to enhance her buttocks, which have expanded proportionally with her fame.
Nonetheless, she has successfully launched and marketed her own clothing lines, perfume ranges and spin-off shows and Kardashian’s mobile game, in which players can try to become a Hollywood star, was last year’s fifth highest earning game in Apple’s App Store. She has over 27m Twitter followers and 23m Instagram followers and is currently worth around £41m ($64m).
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In October she starred on the cover of Paper magazine wearing nothing but pearls and a smile, revealing her bare buttocks to the world above the headline ‘Break the Internet’. The following day the magazine released the fully-frontal nude photographs of the shoot, and its website reportedly saw an average of 15.9m views in one day, compared with its usual 25,000. Many have decried Kardashian’s suitability as a ‘role model’ but Miss Patton said:
‘Kim Kardashian has done really well for herself and has her fingers in a lot of pies [and] I am flattered that some people think I look like her. ‘Her profile has become bigger and bigger – not just her bum – and she has been extremely clever in how she’s marketed herself.’ Miss Patton was bullied at school for her looks and said that to be told she looked like Kim Kardashian helped with her confidence levels. I was more insecure when I was growing up and I was bullied at school’, she said. ‘I had acne, I wasn’t in with any of the cool crowd.. So it’s flattering if a few years later you put on some make-up and people tell you that you look like Kim Kardashian when you go out.’
The PA admits that keeping up with Kim’s appearance is no mean feat, and with costs of over £1,300 per month, the look doesn’t come cheap. Despite having breast implants 14 years ago, Miss Patton has had no other cosmetic surgery and says she would not like her bottom to be any bigger.
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She credits her 27-inch waist and 40-inch buttocks to ‘a lot of Nandos together with squats and weights in the gym’, and added that: ‘It’s also important to me that Kim Kardashian is curvy, and is not a skinny role model.’ Two years ago Miss Patton joined celebrity lookalikes agencies in Leeds and London, whose clients include banks, magazine and television companies, and large retail stores.
The role of the lookalikes is to ‘perform’ their character at private parties, conferences, gala dinners and theme nights, as well as mingle with the crowd and have their photograph taken. ‘My first booking was a private birthday party and I was really nervous’, said Miss Patton.
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‘I wore a tight cream and black body-con Lipsy dress, because Kim likes those dresses, and did my hair and make-up as best I could. ‘Luckily, the host and all her friends love Kim Kardashian so in the end it was great, as I just smiled and had my picture taken with everyone.’
