Being Kardashian is a lesson in how to be a klass act, writes Paul Kalina.

KIM KARDASHIAN'S late father Robert was attorney and close friend to O. J. Simpson. "Uncle OJ" was holed up in the Kardashian family home before starting out on his infamous televised drive through Los Angeles.

Her stepfather is Olympic medal-winning athlete and Hollywood player Bruce Jenner, whose sons are also in the business. She went to school with Paris Hilton — their mothers are also friends — and is a frequent member of the serial party girl's entourage, having travelled with Hilton to Sydney this year to launch a new beer.

Kardashian was destined to be a celebrity "brat" of one shape or another, even without her name and face appearing on the celebrity circus as regularly as Lindsay Lohan's promises to stay sober.

That changed when an unauthorised sex video of her with former boyfriend and rapper Ray-J hit the internet this year. (She reportedly paid $US5 million to buy back DVD rights to withdraw it from commercial distribution.)

But reconciling this sordid (though freakishly predictable history) with the diminutive 27-year-old curled up in the armchair of a five-star suite in Hong Kong enveloped in a plush white bathrobe isn't easy.

She is relaxed, candid and disarmingly unguarded, but photographs of the strikingly beautiful Kardashian — who has an Armenian background — as she now appears are not allowed.

The photo opportunity comes later, when she appears caked in make-up, her eyelashes looking like they've spent an hour in a hot roller. She is squeezed into a boob-and-booty revealing micro-dress and perched atop the kind of porno-chic heels favoured by strippers at the Bada-Bing.

The minders at our interview stipulate that there will be no questions about the sex video scandal. But the publicist sitting in doesn't flinch when Kardashian is asked how long she's had a personal spinner on her pay-roll — and candidly admits that the appointment was made only a few months ago to bat off the inevitable flak that the video generated.

It's not as if Kim Kardashian and her clan need too much coaching to deal with the trials and tribulations of living under the media spotlight.

In what can only be called a natural career progression E! Entertainment Television has come up with a reality show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, about this larger-than-life Hollywood family. (The network last week started filming the Lohan family for a similar program.)

Kim's blended family includes her manager and mother — or, as she is too-cutely known here, her "momager" — Kris, stepfather Bruce, sisters Kourtney and Khloe, and stepbrothers Brody and Brandon Jenner.

Between them, this modern-day, alliterative Brady bunch sports a dizzying resume of B-list Hollywood credentials: I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive (rich kids go west) and Princes of Malibu (a reality O.C.).

However, Kardashian denies that she was predestined for the entertainment world. After school she worked in her father's music business and started a clothes boutique that she continues to run with her sisters. Modelling and acting jobs, which she thought foolish to pass over, just came her way.

As she tells it, the idea of the show came from producer and American Idol host Ryan Seacrest. He "was shocked that we all hang out in Hollywood and yet are so close".

For Kardashian, the show is an opportunity to redress "misconceptions" about Hollywood kids. Such as? "That we shop all day and party every night. I get up every day to go to my store where I do the buying, billing and accounting, and pick up my little sisters (Kendall, 11, and Kylie, nine) from school."

If mum's not at home she even makes dinner. "I don't even drink alcohol. They assume we're out partying all night, staying up, drunk. It's not what I do."

"They" being the paparazzi of course, whose members, says Kardashian, are more fixated on finding scandals than ever. "The paparazzi want to tear everyone down; Britney Spears is more popular now than she was before."

She doesn't resent the invasion of privacy, she says, it's part and parcel of today's celebrity culture but she remains acutely aware of it.

"I'm not afraid to be out there because I don't have anything to hide," she says, a comment that is either brazen or hopelessly naive given that millions of people the world over have seen her having intercourse.

Any lingering doubts about making the show are swept aside by mother Kris. "It's a business. It's a means to an end," says the fiftysomething-going-on-thirtysomething mother of six.

For the past 17 years, Kris has also managed her husband's media career, which has included high-profile product endorsements, motivational speaking and numerous television roles.

She scoffs at the backlash that has met the latest wave of Hollywood brat scandals, the responsibility for which has been laid squarely at the feet of lousy parents.

"I laugh at those statements," she says, referring to the harsh judgements delivered by the army of commentators on the Britney-Lindsay-Paris bandwagon. "There comes a time in life where you can't control everything your children do. You can try, and God knows that Kathy Hilton and Lynn Spears, who's a great mum, have. But, you know, we all have our challenges raising kids, the difference is they're doing it in the public eye."

Keeping Up With The Kardashians was "the best job I've ever heard of", says Kris. "I'd recommend this to anyone going through family therapy. Lock yourself in your house for 18 hours a day for four months and you'll work it all out."

Keeping Up With The Kardashians airs on E! on Mondays at 10pm.

Paul Kalina travelled to Hong Kong courtesy of E!