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Oh baby! What a year it was for celebrities - and their bizarrely named offspring. With silver-spooned newborns (or adoptees) arriving at what often seemed like a one-a-week rate, it's surprising anyone found time to split up. But, this being the realm of fame, fortune and falling outs, plenty of couples did. The public meltdown was another popular pursuit among the famous this year. Indeed, for fans of tabloid stories, 2006 was a thriller.
The Pumped
Brangelina & Shiloh Nouvel
If good things come in threes, then the world has yet another reason to envy Angelina Jolie, who cemented her relationship with life partner No 3 Brad Pitt in 2006 (post-Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton) by adding sprog No 3 Shiloh Nouvel (post-Maddox and Zahara) and a third syllable to their surname by changing it to Jolie-Pitt. For a child whose name means "the peaceful one", Shiloh sparked an unprecedented media frenzy (and celebrity penchant for eccentrically named babies) by simply being born. Oh wait, did I say "unprecedented"? There also the small matter of...
TomKat & Suri
Never one for half-measures, Tom Cruise - Hollywood's leading advocate of the controversial Church of Self-Improvement Through Couch-Jumping - drew a wee bit of press coverage himself with the birth in April of a daughter, Suri, with then not-yet-wife Katie Holmes. Depending on your language preference, the name means either "Red Rose" (Persian), "Princess" (Hebrew as interpreted by Cruise) or, well, not "Princess" (actual Hebrew). Come on, what's not to like about "TomKitten"?
MadgeGuy & David
Not to be outdone by rank amateurs in the field of shameless self-promotion, Madonna and film director husband Guy Ritchie did a little baby-making - make that baby-taking - of their own in October with the much-publicised adoption of a Malawian boy. Slammed for playing fast and loose with the country's laws and the rules of the adoption process, Madge did the only thing she could: Congratulated herself and used the F-word a lot in interviews. Far less colourful is the name of her adopted son: David Banda - positively bland compared to Suri and Shiloh.
The Popped
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Britney & K-Fed
Was there anyone (other than Kevin Federline, of course) who didn't foresee the inevitable split-up of the entertainment world's most Chaotic couple? Once the definitive music biz pairing, the Spears-Federline union was finally brought down last month after two years, two kids and too many tabloid headlines by (surprise, surprise) the same thing that had started it: K-Fed's philandering. It seems the title of his critically savaged debut album, Playing With Fire, was prescient: Britney's air-tight pre-nup ensured he got doubly burned.
Pamela & Kid Rock
Here was another marital disaster waiting to happen, one that only a couple consisting of the world's ditziest former beach bimbo and its second least talented musician (thanks, K-Fed) would be lame-brained enough to enter into. Though their four-month marriage - most of it spent in the tropics - was far off the 55-hour futility mark set by Spears in 2004 when she married her childhood friend in Las Vegas, it was long enough to expose the world to far more shots of the increasingly saggy twosome in swimwear than anyone without a sight impairment should have to bear. American Bad Ass, indeed.
Heather & Richie & Denise & Charlie
Though lower-profile than the year's top two break-ups (or for that matter, the surprising Reese Witherspoon-Ryan Phillippe and Hilary Swank-Chad Lowe partings), this multi-car pile-up of a marital mishap was barely comprehensible without a flowchart. Suffice it to say that former gal pals Heather Locklear and Denise Richards aren't quite as "buddy buddy" since Richards (the former Mrs Charlie Sheen) took up with Locklear's ex-hubby, Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora. I guess this means bridge night is off?
The Busted
Lindsay Lohan
Taking a leaf from Madge's playbook, Hollywood's leading bad girl embarked on a self-promotion campaign this year that failed in its aim to boost her lacklustre star power. In a constant state of denial (in more ways than one), Lohan found herself backtracking on public statements that she had used drugs, suffered from bulimia and gotten overly frisky with one too many boyfriends. Perhaps, as she wrote in an error-filled message to the family of the late film director Robert Altman, Lohan should take to heart her own misspelled advice to simply "Be Adequite".
Mel Gibson and Michael Richards
In Part I of this year's two-installment Racist Rants R Us extravaganza, Gibson did his part for religious intolerance by spouting sexist and anti-Semitic remarks while being arrested in July for drink driving. In Part II, former Seinfeld star Michael Richards faced the repercussions of an anti-black tirade he delivered when heckled during a stand-up routine in November. While their punishments were mostly limited to public disgrace, they could probably have used a taste of the medicine dished out to another offending entertainer, namely...
Boy George
The former Culture Club frontman was reduced to sweeping Manhattan streets in August after failing to pay a US$1,000 ($1,530) fine and complete five days of community service arising from charges of falsely reporting a break-in at his home. Predictably, he was mobbed by the paparazzi upon taking a broom and garbage bag in hand, prompting him to label the experience a "nightmare" and to insist that an interfering reporter could "kiss my ass". The journalist in question might not have wanted to admit it but by granting George headlines for behaving like flawed (that is to say, normal) human beings, he was doing just that. No need for gratitude, celebs. Your idiocy is thanks enough. - TODAY
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