What's love got to do with it? Fleetwood Mac in 1978. Photograph: Rex Features
If the mass media teaches us anything (and it doesn't) it's that celebrity relationships aren't easy.
Love is hell when you're an anonymous mope wallowing in your own filth and self-pity, but it's worse when your personal relationships are pored over by an entire nation. No wonder Fearne Cotton is reportedly worried about the songs her ex-borefriend Fame Academy no-hoper Peter Brame has written about her.
Having dated Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins and Kooks' omega male Luke Pritchard, Cotton is no stranger to that unique blend of emotional incontinence and shameless indiscretion peculiar to the model songsmith. The briefest look at pop history confirms that Cotton's fears are well founded for even the most insignificant relationship can get written up, reimagined and be on a CD before you can say "Patti Boyd".
Justine Frischmann likely felt her stomach churning the first time she heard Suede's Animal Nitrate documenting as it does the breakdown of her relationship with Brett Anderson. Then we had the glass-eyed emotional sadism of Björn Ulvaeus as he handed his estranged wife the lyrics to The Winner Takes it All. Though Abba were given a run for their money in the inter-group soap opera stakes by Fleetwood Mac who, in between nervous breakdowns and drug blowouts, liked nothing better than archiving their messy infidelities on vinyl.
But even they were quite restrained by hip-hop's standards. When misogyny is your default setting, chivalry takes a back seat - a lesson Faith Evans learnt the hard way when she got caught up in the crossfire of the East Coast-West Coast wars. "I fucked your bitch, you fat motherfucker!" was Tupac's precis of his dalliance with the then Mrs Biggie Smalls. (And a good day to you, sir.)
Though such relationship biography is not just for the purposes of gloating - revenge can work well too. Dogg Pound veteran Kurupt savagely disses DMX and Foxy Brown on the track Calling Out Names for the fling they had while she was engaged to Kurupt. Retaining dignity with stoic silence? Not for these boys.
But it's not just bad karma you're messing with, it's bad lyrics too. Peter Brame has bravely overcome his shyness to quote some verse about his former squeeze: "With your hands around my neck, you knock me off my feet, you're ripping out my throat".
This is Fearne Cotton we're talking about, right? It's always the quiet ones isn't it? All this demonstrates that you really can't be too careful picking your partners when you're in the public eye. With the government sexual health policy looking increasingly confused one thing stands out like a beacon - the only truly safe sex is never to date a songwriter.
