Worst celebrity-penned books

What is it about celebrities? They get a tiny drip-feed of fame, and suddenly they're all budding authors. The 'sleb book' is something that's been foisted on us for many years, and some are more execrable than others. We've sieved through the finest awfulness of celebrity penmanship to bring you our five most travesty-making books...

A Mother's Gift by Britney and Lynne Spears

Well, wouldn't y'all know it, lil' Britney wrote herself a book a few years ago! With her Mommy's help, of course. It's about a young aspiring singer called Holly Faye Lovell, who lives with her mother in a tiny little place (can you see where this is going yet?). Holly scores a place at a prestigious music school and everything seems like it's going to be great! But naturally, those snobby city folk mock her simple country ways, and...oh God, I've lost the will to live. Treacly nonsense from a pre-Cheetos and Red Bull Britters.

Swan by Naomi Campbell

The irascible supermodel tried to branch out from tottering down strips of wood in the early 1990s, first with her lame pop career (Love and Tears, anyone?) and then Swan, a novel, which Naomi wrote all herself, oh yes. Except she hadn't, and admitted so later on, claiming, "I just did not have time to sit down and write a book." Well, many of us don't dearie, but we don't pretend we have done. The story? Oh, it's about an 'English-born supermodel', who gets embroiled in something, or other. If she can’t write it, we can't read it!

Voice of an Angel: My Life (So Far) by Charlotte Church

Now, we're big fans of Charl, here. She's outspoken, feisty, talented and a breath of fresh air compared to other anodyne celebs. But what THE HELL is a then-fifteen-year-old doing penning her memoirs? How thrilling can that be? 'Woke up, squeezed spot, wrote notes to friend at school..' Oh, sorry, that was our teenage life. But for goodness sake, Charlotte’s changed so very much since 2001 that this book of her holier-than-thou warbling exploits is already totally irrelevant.

The Devil's Tune by Iain Duncan Smith

Ousted ex-Tory leader fills up his days by penning badly-received thriller, anyone? Released to little fanfare in 2003, the Quiet Man's book dives into dodgy dealing in the art world, perceived as an allegory to his time as the Conservative head honcho. One Amazon reviewer condemns it as "Kind of like a plain ricecake in thriller form; bland, unrewarding, slightly presumptuous of human stupidity. An ideal present for someone you don't like who reads a lot." Poor old IDS.

Mr MacGregor by Alan Titchmarsh

What is it with public figures and wafer-thin transparency when it comes to writing 'fiction'? In TV gardener Titchmarsh’s first novel, Mr MacGregor is a TV gardener (riiight), who become a heart-throb (o-kaay) and has an affair with a newsreader (ugh). He famously picked up the Runners-Up prize in the Literary Review's annual Bad Sex award for a particularly cringy passage in the novel (don't read it after lunch).