Born August 5: Pete Burns

Safe to say, no one has ever been more successful milking a career from one hit song than Pete Burns with his band Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)." Twenty-two years after its 1984 release, Burns was the second most searched name of 2006 on UK Yahoo! behind Beatle divorcer Heather Mills. Almost everything he does needs to be labeled notorious or infamous, from his quitting college after twenty minutes to his pioneering gender bending kookiness (androgynous before Boy George, kabuki before Madonna) to his stint on Celebrity Big Brother (leading to his almost arrest for wearing a coat he claimed was gorilla) to his botched plastic surgery. Where others see shameless fame whoring Burns sees opportunity, so he starred in a reality tv show called Pete Burns' Cosmetic Surgery Nightmares. The next year he starred in another reality series about finding a personal assistant. Less surprising than the revelation that he was married to a woman from the early 80s until 2006 is the fact that he managed to marry his boyfriend Michael Simpson in 2007 without the lifeblood of a tv camera shoved in his re-re-re-constructed face. Ah, but within two months they were on Celebrity Wife Swap in which they traded partners with a straight couple for five days, Burns getting rough and tumble footballer Neil Ruddock. He titled his autobiography Freak Unique.