The top ten...

Being a step-parent is never easy but when you throw a famous ego, or two, into the mixing bowl, it can be a recipe for disaster. Mind your step... it's the top ten steely step-parents...

Rula Lenska, 55, whipped Dennis Waterman from under Patricia Maynard's nose, to the horror of their daughter Hannah, aka EastEnders' Laura Beale. Rula then accused Dennis of being a heavy-drinking wife-beater, provoking a rebuttal from Pat. Then Rula appeared in EastEnders (thankfully, just as a guest).

After Raine, Countess Spencer, 74, married the late Earl in 1976, even ground staff at Althorp dubbed her residency 'the Raine of terror'. Diana, Princess of Wales nicknamed her stepmother Acid Raine after she sold off treasures and redecorated Althorp. Raine's mother, Barbara Cartland, couldn't have dreamt up a better drama.

Esther Rantzen, 63, might be the nation's Watchdog but her stepchildren haven't always been so well protected. When Esther published her autobiography, she savaged her husband Desmond Wilcox's first wife Patsy (who never got over losing Desmond to her friend) saying that Patsy was vengeful and bitter. But that's life.

'The only problem I have with Linda,' said Lady McCartney, 35, 'is I never met her to say what a wonderful job you did with your man.' Not the best thing to say around children traumatised by their mother's death. Add her glib remarks about Stella's designs, plans for a veggie cookbook, and her pregnancy... it's domestic blitz.

Since she inherited the licensing rights to her late husband Frank Sinatra's estate, Barbara Sinatra, 76, has done it her way. To the dismay of his children, Frank Jnr, Nancy and Tina, Babs has put Sinatra's image on everything from pasta sauce to singing plates - an enterprise even she calls 'tacky and cheap'. But lucrative.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? presenter Chris Tarrant, 56, is a tolerant sort. He insisted that unless his teenage stepson Dexter got a job, 'he could no longer expect the comfort of our roof over his head'. Dexter retorted by calling Chris 'an egotistical pig who tries to buy his family's love with money'.

The fifth Baroness von Thyssen, 60, was described by her late husband's children, Francesca and Georg, as a social climber and gold-digger. When the billionaire baron died last year, 'Tita' said: 'The King of Spain was first to offer commiseration, before the children.' She has since sold off some family heirlooms.

They come back to haunt you. A month before Liza Minnelli's wedding last year, her stepmother Lee Anderson, 94, tried to sue her for more than $1 million, claiming the singer was trying to evict her. In fact, she was simply trying to rehouse her - and Lee dropped the case.

Wilbur Smith, 70, was taken to court last year for attempting to swindle his stepchildren out of his fortune. Dieter Schmidt claims the writer led a secret life as a Sri Lankan national, 'Steven Bisset Lawrence', signing over his money to convenience companies to 'place assets out of reach of children born of his former wives'.

Things were going swimmingly for Josh Brolin and his fiancee Minnie Driver - until his stepmother stepped in. Barbra Streisand, 61 - a diva whose reputation as a singer is surpassed only by her reputation as, well, a diva - insisted that Josh's nuptials be modelled on her own £350,000 wedding to Josh's father, James Brolin. The engagement is now a sour memory.