Role models of the year: Why it's Back to Black and back again for Amy

A celeb-land year is much shorter than a human one, so they have a lot to pack in

Celebrity years, like dog years, are faster than the 365-day ones we understand as human beings. Just as your loving pet needs to eat, sleep, fart and scratch its balls more frequently than the average owner, so it is with celebs.

This explains why famous people live fast and die young. It also explains how Kerry Katona manages to have three fiances, a baby and a spell in rehab in the time it takes most people to approach someone at the office Christmas party and ask them for a snog.

That's why the past year in celeb-land has packed in so much in such a short time. But some girls are more committed than most to this non-stop speed walk through shopping and snorting. Whether it is marriage, divorce, drug addiction or rehab, these thrill-seekers don't hang around. It remains to be seen whether even celebrity gestation periods are faster than human ones.

Amy Winehouse

With a bestselling album, an errant husband, a drug addiction, a list of mysterious injuries and, last week, an arrest, Amy has packed more into the past year than most. But, as far as we know, she's not pregnant. So the worst she faces is 10 years' hard labour.

Lily Allen

Most people get to know each other before settling down and having babies. But most people are not Lily Allen (thank goodness), who announced last week that she is pregnant with the child of Chemical Brothers star Ed Simons, her boyfriend of three months.

Britney Spears

At the time of writing, Britney was between husbands, though that could change as we go to press. Meanwhile, her 16-year-old sister, Jamie Lynn, is pregnant. This could spell trouble for her 19-year-old boyfriend, as the age of consent in Louisiana is 17.

Kerry Katona

Most humans who observe the pregnant northern cutie as she hurtles from one wrong 'un to another want to shake her and say: "Kerry, put him down, you don't know where he's been." But not Jonathan Ross, who made her cry on TV.