I'm a celebrity... Get me out of debt

If you are in debt, or have money problems, take a little comfort in the knowledge that it is not just mere mortals who can have sticky moments with cash. The list of celebrities who have battled debt or been declared bankrupt is a long one.

Shane Ritchie may be a star on EastEnders but if you bump into him in your local, he is unlikely to be the one buying the drinks. Despite earning a celebrity salary rumoured to be £200,000 playing loveable Queen Vic barman Alfie Moon, Ritchie faced arrears on the £8,000-a month mortgage of his £2 million mansion and had to sell his dream home to avoid bankruptcy and clear up his debts. Ritchie bought the house, with pool and cinema, in 1996 for £400,000, but had to remortgage five times over the years after running up £500,000 in debt after his career nosedived. He then used his new income to splurge £250,000 on a 40th birthday party and fund a movie called Shoreditch, starring Joely Richardson. 'I bankrolled it to the tune of half a million,' he says. 'Every penny I had went into it. Last summer my car was repossessed, I could not pay the mortgage for a year and bailiffs were threatening to come round over a £2,000 bill.'. Friends helped him clear up his immediate debts and will no doubt be expecting to see their cash returned now Ritchie is back in the black.

Another soap star in financial hot water is Coronation Street's Bill Roache who plays Ken Barlow. The actor was made bankrupt in 1999 after he was ordered to pay legal costs despite winning a libel case against the Sun newspaper. He was awarded £50,000 in damages but because the figure was exactly the same amount that the paper had earlier offered him in an out-of-court settlement, he subsequently had to meet legal costs of around £120,000 and his debts are believed to have spiralled to £600,000.

Success and excess

Former boxing champion Mike Tyson became a household name during a career which earned him more than £165 million. But he is no longer packing a punch at the cashpoint after being declared bankrupt with debts of more than £70 million. His sumptuous mansions have long since been sold along with his collection of exotic cars and he now lives in a modest rented home in Phoenix.

Making a living out of telling others how to handle their money seemed like a good idea at the time for former 1960s singer Adam Faith. But the collapse of the satellite television channel he founded, The Money Channel, saw him declared bankrupt with debts of £32 million. When Faith died in 2003, his widow Jackie was forced to move out of the marital home after pressure from creditors. Agents for an insolvency firm handling her late husband's affairs claimed half of the family possessions along with 50% of a 'paltry' life insurance policy.

At the height of his fame, football legend George Best's life was one long party of stunning women, fast cars and excess. When average footballers of the day were earning £75 a week, Best was taking home £3500. But the money - along with his liver - failed to support the indulgent lifestyle. He took up gambling after he gave up football, claiming it was a way of filling 'the void' which the mundanities of ordinary life never can. He was declared bankrupt in November 1982 owing creditors £22,000. His most famous comment on the subject: 'I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.'

I'll see you in court

Not all celebrity debtors are men. Nor do they come more glamorous than Kim Basinger. In March 1993, Kim pulled out of Boxing Helena, four weeks before shooting. Sued by the studio, she had to declare herself bankrupt to settle the £6 million claim - and this came after her ill-fated decision in 1989 to buy the town of Braselton, Georgia, for £12.5million, which was later sold. The late eighties also saw a bitter divorce from her first husband, makeup artist Ron Britton, who had been her manager. He had reportedly demanded a £15 million settlement.

Pop group Bros were one of the first in a wave of UK boybands and lit up the UK charts in 1988, notching up ten singles in the top ten - a record surpassing even the Beatles. They had the country's biggest fan club with 30,000 members. But their lifestyle was way beyond even their considerable means earned through sales of 17 million albums. In 18 months, they spent more than £700,000. When the band split, drummer Craig Logan sued twin front men Matt and Luke Goss for unpaid royalties and was awarded £1m which left the brothers near bankrupt. As teenagers, the band were hardly expected to understand the difference between net and gross. Although Matt Goss admits to enjoying the spoils of his success, he points out that rock 'n roll doesn't come cheap: 'But we were also spending a fortune on wages to all our support staff - at one point it was £70,000 a week. That's a big chunk of money to find every week and people don't realise that when we were doing concerts it costs £250,000 just to rent out Wembley Stadium. Then you've got to pay for security, a lighting rig and PA system . . . the bigger the success the bigger the expense.'

Perhaps they should have taken a hint from a fictional debtor. Charles Dickens' character Mr Micawber famously concluded how to manage money in the simplest of terms: 'Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound nought and six, result misery'. He had just enough time to reflect on this before he was thrown into jail for failing to repay his debts.