It's a sad list of trash and travail but someone has to compile it. Kristie Lau and Andrew Taylor obliged.
Paris Hilton leads 2007's top headline hogs.
There are three things guaranteed to sell a story in the world of celebrity gossip: birth, death and incarceration. This year's hot list of limelight hogs queued up to face arrest ( Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, Amy Winehouse), get knocked up or adopt ( Brangelina, Cate Blanchett) encounter the Grim Reaper (Anna Nicole Smith) or bounce back from a close brush ( Kylie Minogue).
One thing that rarely sets tongues wagging are high achievers - with the exception of Blanchett, who reprised her queenly role in Elizabeth: The Golden Age and is now on the throne of the Sydney Theatre Company, and Big Brother reject Krystal Forscutt, now queen of the lads' mags.
Any media studies textbook will tell you that tragedy sells, says University of Sydney media and communications lecturer Marc Brennan. "Additionally, it is often when tragedies impact on celebrities that they are perceived as being all the more human - more like us," he says.
Measuring the hot air expended on celebrities is an entirely scientific process involving the tallying of trash mag headlines, TV segments, Google pages, fan sites and fan clubs. In sorting Spears's encounters with the law from the Kyle Sandilands hate spiels and Posh's latest singing outrage, we also waded through Facebook groups, YouTube uploads and MySpace hits.
Notable debutantes in 2007's hot list include the singing stick insect Winehouse, lads' mag favourite Jessica Alba and our pint-sized high achiever, Bindi Irwin.
In contrast, other stars simply make us snore, namely Dannii Minogue, Beyonce, Jessica Simpson, Mischa Barton, Jennifer Aniston and Keira Knightley.
With our finger firmly on the pop culture pulse, we celebrate the end of yet another star-soaked year with our list of the 20 most talked-about celebs for 2007.............