The lifespan of certain celebrities can be as short as the name of the new chocolate bar which Anthea Turner posed with for lots of money in her wedding pictures - a snowflake. They would be the B, C, D and all the way to Zzzzzlist celebs, who we see so much information about that it amounts to a type of junk-advertising for a product that you can't actually buy. But, heck, let's gawk at it and read all about what makes it tick.
Why do famous and not-so-famous people think their lives are so incredibly interesting that they clog up bookshops with lengthy, ghost-written autobiographies? In Ireland, we generally don't rush to adore at the altar of celebrityhood but in the US and UK there is no shortage of bodies prostrating before said altar.
Celeb autobiographies are a bit like those annuals you used to buy at Christmas - a slightly different version of the same emerges each year.
Apart from the money which these books can make for their subject, there is undoubtedly the additional seduction of the element of control people have over the image portrayed of themselves. If you heard it from the horse's mouth, wouldn't you believe the nag and not the jockey, is the reasoning.
Prime example of this tussle for control is the legal action the Beckhams recently took against Andrew Morton's book about them, Posh & Becks: they tried to ban it. In the end, they settled for the removal of 200 uncomplimentary words about them. Mind you, there were plenty of other uncomplimentary stories about them. Then again, they weren't paying Morton to ghost write it for them so what do you expect?
Cue David Beckham with David Beckham; My World taking the biog ball and running with it, before passing to wife Victoria, who got £1 million for her (as yet unwritten) story of more-of-the-same at the Frankfurt Book Fair last week. This was reported as a record price for the celeb story. David's mantras in his book were "gutted", "fashion", "Brooklyn", "football", and "Victoria"; Victoria's will probably be "sod it", "fashion", "Brooklyn", "Spice Girls", and "David".
Our home-grown pop celebrity, Ronan Keating, has also just put his life in print. Underage drinking and mitching from school! Shock! Horror! Wild Boyz! Life is a Rollercoaster has since dropped off the bestseller list.
Earlier this autumn, Geri Halliwell, ex-Ginger Spice, appeared briefly on the bestsellers list with her story, If Only. And in another example of the genre, the late Michael Hutchence's story, Just a Man; The Real Michael Hutchence, was served up this month by his sister and mother.
