These days you can’t walk past a rack of magazines without seeing emaciated celebs peering sadly from the cover, headlines screaming “Breakdown!” or in-depth reportage over an alleged scandal and stars’ secrets. Whether its celebs themselves airing their dirty laundry or showbiz journalists dishing the dirt, we can’t seem to get enough.

Despite a tough year for print media which has seen the closure of several publications, the gossip rags have remained popular, with OK! claiming the title of best-selling celebrity gossip magazine. This is far from the only magazine dedicated to this subject matter. Heat, Hello!, Star, Now, Reveal, Closer and New are all hot on OK!’s heels. As a general rule, magazines are only launched if it is cost-effective to do so and if the publishers see a market for it. And there is most definitely a market for all things celebrity.

The antics of Britney, LiLo and Paris have enthralled and revolted people the world over. Their lives are essentially gossip fodder and have become public property, a reality TV show that we can’t switch off from. The more outrageously they behave, the more magazines they sell. We have a macabre interest in watching their lives fall apart or turn into a real-life car crash, because it’s almost like theatre. Crassly put, its mere entertainment and boils down to nothing more than harmless schadenfreude. We have no emotional attachment to these people apart from liking or disliking them. Their lives are so far removed from our own that we can only dream of being able to identify with them.

It often seems they play along with the theatrics, constantly striving for media coverage through outrageous PR stunts. And why not? They work. The media loves an “are-they aren’t-they” celebrity ‘couple’, shotgun wedding or extreme weight loss. If a starlet needs their profile boosting, out come the sordid revelations. Some celebrities have managed to turn it into a career all by itself. It seems laughable that a few are happy ruining their lives for the sake of six inches on page ten of a tabloid. Yet it happens.

There’s the bandwagon-jumping, most notably with the Size 0 trend, which became the focus of a quasi moral panic stirred up by the media. How can a celeb get some more column inches? Getting thin would be a good way to start. “I’m naturally a size 0, I eat at McDonalds every day and never exercise” may be true of 0.01% of Celebville, but the rest are telling porky pies. Yet if the media is willing to be led up the garden path in the first place, you can’t expect everything you read to be gospel.

The It-Girl is a media phenomenon, often synonymous with celebrity offspring who spend their days wandering aimlessly around Kitson or some other equally hip department store in place of having a real occupation. But if you can be photographed three times in a row in a passable (or really, really rank) outfit, you can become a ‘style icon’ and get your own modelling contract, TV show and magazine column off the back of it. Good for them for bypassing the usual route of having to go to castings, audition for roles or get a degree. This just makes it even better/ funnier when they inevitably fall flat on their faces by trying to get a finger in every pie.

All of this may sound a touch cynical or even quite nasty. But celebrities know from the off exactly what they’re letting themselves in for. In fact, in the case of many, it’s what they’ve spent their lives striving to achieve. Be careful what you wish for, because celebrities get torn apart in the tabloids just for existing. One day you’re the darling of the media, the next you’ve been written off and are a figure of ridicule. Celebrities are victims of their own fame. For us lowly mortals, who will never achieve A list, or even B list, status stars lives are simply something we can distract ourselves with for 10 minutes on a coffee break from work. We pick up a magazine, read, criticise, pour scorn on their actions, pity them, feel glad it’s not us then forget. It’s a cycle that readers simply cannot break. Celebrities’ lives are just entertainment and serve as a reminder that no matter bad our own lives are, theirs will always be worse. It’s almost therapeutic, the reason why we can’t switch off from the drama. And is that really worth selling your soul for?