Pinning down the source of happiness is a decidedly tricky art – is happiness a result of meeting a number of preconceived societal ideals? Is it just another biological function? Can happiness be determined by checking boxes in a psychological test?

According to a recently-released poll, happiness seems to come when you go on telly with a bunch of genuinely hateful, bitter, self-important arseholes who used to be famous, and then getting engaged to someone from a dreadful Madness rip-off band while presenting a useless programme that nobody watches anyway, fully aware that your 15 minutes are tick-tocking down the toilet all the time.

That's right: Chantelle from Celebrity Big Brother is officially the second happiest person in the country.

Celebrity Big Brother did a lot of things for a lot of people – like reminding the world that Rula Lenska wasn't just a bad dream from the 1970s and enforcing the idea that Jodie Marsh is the biggest dipshit on the face of the earth – but Chantelle Houghton seems to have gained the most from the experience.

After winning Celebrity Big Brother at the start of the year, Chantelle has snared Preston from indie no-marks The Ordinary Boys away from his confused girlfriend, presented Chantelle: Living The Dream – a programme where 'living the dream' was shown to be 'getting interviewed by Vernon Kay, complaining about photographers a bit and uncomfortably dead-eying your way through a number of soul-sapping nightclub PAs.'

Despite this, Chantelle has been voted the second-happiest person in the whole country by The Independent On Sunday or – to be more precise – Ann Widecombe, a bishop and someone who writes a magazine about hedges who were chosen by the paper to decide the 50 happiest people in Britain today. Chantelle came second not because she has a face like the world's stupidest duck and only seems to have a vocabulary of eight words, but because:

'Oh my God!' – pop star fiancé Preston and a career as a tabloid 'It'
girl. The nobody who won 'Celebrity Big Brother' lives her dream.

Chantelle was pipped to the happy post by Camilla, for presumably marrying Prince Charles and getting to wear all that jewelry. Other names in the happiness list included Chelsea footballer Joe Cole, who reportedly had it off with a Page 3 girl until her boyfriend beat him up; Pete Waterman, for liking trains; and Charlotte Church, for being drunk all the time.

Are you happier than Chantelle? Maybe you'll only be happy when Chantelle stops being famous (ETA: about six weeks). Leave your thoughts below…

Read more:

Happy List 2006 – Independent On Sunday

[story by Stuart Heritage]