And you know that poo you did this morning? The one you bit off prematurely because you were in a rush? JK Rowling earnt enough money to buy two Playstations and a week in a Greek villa during that. It’s just been announced, you see, that JK Rowling is the richest author on the planet, earning £5 a second.

So even just then, when you recoiled in disgust at our graphic description of chopping a poo in half with your sphincter, JK Rowling probably made enough money to go on a three-hour shopping spree at Primark. A shopping spree that ironically would earn JK Rowling enough money to but a nice eight-berth yacht that, if she took on a two-week cruise, would earn her enough money to buy your entire family forever, basically.

JK Rowling is very fond of telling the story about how she wrote the first Harry Potter book in a Scottish cafe before going home to a damp-filled flat that she had to sleep standing up in because it wasn’t big enough for a bed. But now, if she wanted, JK Rowling could easily buy that cafe. And that flat.

In fact, if JK Rowling really felt like it, she could probably pay to have Scotland chainsawed off and scuttled out of nothing more than petty spite. Because JK Rowling is rich.

That’s probably not such a surprise, what with JK Rowling writing the most popular series of children’s books of all time which then went on to create some of the most successful movies of all time and some of the most oppressively ubiquitous spin-off merchandise of all time. But, really, JK Rowling is rich.

JK Rowling is so rich that in an hour she earns as much as a call centre worker does in a year. In a day she earns what a Premiership footballer does in a week. And in a week, JK Rowling earns enough to bulldoze everything on the planet and write a message across the Earth challenging the Sun to a fight. BBC News reports:

JK Rowling is the world’s highest-earning author, making more than £5 every second over the past year, US business magazine Forbes has announced. The Harry Potter writer, who made a total of $300m (£170m) last year, wrote the first of her best-selling books about the boy wizard in 1997. Her income was six times more than literature’s next-biggest earner, James Patterson, of Along Came A Spider fame.

That’s an incredible amount of money – so huge that JK Rowling must barely be able to comprehend it herself. She could go to a pub, drink 20 pints of beer in a minute and still come out having made quite a substantial profit.

Of course, there’s no doubting that JK Rowling earnt her money and, in a year that saw the release of the final Harry Potter book and a Harry Potter movie, we’re probably seeing JK Rowling at the peak of her earning potential at the moment.

It’s probably for the best that JK Rowling stopped writing Harry Potter books when she did, though, because ultimately her lifestyle would eventually begin to bleed into her creations. And Harry Potter And The Day Spent Throwing Faberge Eggs Off A Shopping Centre Car Park For The Amusement Of People He’d Bought As His Slaves doesn’t exactly have best-seller written all over it.

Yes, the Fresh Prince has taken most of his time in-between promoting Hancock defending himself from rabid media types hurling these accusations at him.

We at hecklerspray feel very sorry for Will, so we’re starting a ‘Help Will Smith Fund’ where we will collect aluminium cans and sell them at local scrap yards to raise funds to help young Willy defend himself…

What’s that? He earned how much?! Oh. Well sod him then.

Yes, poor old Will will have to console himself with the fact that he’s only managed to be the highest earning Hollywood type of the last year, bringing home around $80 million clams (around 40 million British clams) for Jada Pinkett and the rest of the family. It will be hard, we’re sure, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Light made out of money, most likely. In a tunnel forged from gold-laced platinum.

We’re not ones to be jealous, nor are we ones to judge – much – but in this case we’re jealous and we may just have to judge ol’ big Willie. It is interesting to see that his alleged affiliations with Scientology haven’t harmed his career in any way – the box office performance of Hancock is testament to that. Even ignoring the huge success of the man and his movies, the performance of Hancock has even gone so far as to be record-breaking – Smitty has managed eight movies in a row grossing more than $100,000,000. That’s one hundred million dollars. More than. Eight times. In a row.

Crikey.

So really – what does Will Smith have to do to fail? What cock up does he have to make before people decide they don’t like him any more? He’s tried bankruptcy, berating an old woman’s driving ability, a failed marriage, cussing Eminem, Men In Black II and possibly being one of those crazy Scientology types, and nothing has made the ever-hating public dislike him. In any way. Ever.

Maybe his constant appearances at the top of rich lists will change all this? Maybe not. Hecklerspray has bore witness to many popular celebrities over the years that have achieved something of a massive fall from grace, normally due to them earning vast amounts of money. Case in point – will anyone openly admit to liking Mike Myers (also in the top five rich list) any more? Thought not. Go back to the early/mid nineties and he was much-loved. This scientific theory doesn’t seem to apply to Will Smith though, and frankly it’s hurting our giant mind.

Maybe it’ll have to be something drastic, like threatening his mum and sister (allegedly), or… errm… getting pregnant underage…

Wow – this horse really is easy to flog when it’s dead!

As far as we can tell, that's been Madonna's trick, and it seems to have done OK for her – a Forbes survey has declared that Madonna is the richest woman in music, earning about $72 million a year.

Ask yourself this, though – does all that money make Madonna happy? Yes, of course it does. But does it make her look less wrinkled and veiny? No is does not. Ergo we win.

In six months' time, Madonna will turn 50. But does this mean she'll start taking up traditional 50-year-old woman pursuits like jam-making, attending WI coffee mornings and crocheting little cardigans for all the babies you've just realised you're too old to have?

No way. Because Madonna, right, is effing loaded.

OK, that's not really a big surprise – in 2006 Madonna completed the highest-grossing tour by any female in history, plus she signed that ridiculously huge record deal with Live Nation that'll keep her in leotards for the next decade. So that's this year and 2006 dealt with, but how much money did Madonna make in 2007?

According to the Forbes 'Cash Queens Of Music' list, the answer is 'a bloody great shitload'. Reuters reports:

Pop star Madonna is still the material girl, earning $72 million in a recent 12-month period to top a Forbes.com list of female singers whom the financial Web site dubbed "Cash Queens of Music." … The Web site tracked earnings in the period from June 2006 to June 2007 and said it examined concert ticket sales, merchandise revenue, album sales and earnings from ancillary products such as clothing, perfumes and endorsements.

You just have to sit back and applaud Madonna for earning a gigantic figure like that, don't you? And it's all the more impressive when you realise that she's basically a middle-aged failed star of erotic thrillers who makes her living by monomaniacally chasing every single hot new trend she gets a sniff of.

And all that's without a perfume, too. In an age when every two-bit reality TV schmo has got their own fragrance line, imagine how popular a perfume by a megastar as big as Madonna would be. Unless of course it smelt like Madonna, which we'd imagine to be a mixture of Botox and pickled vulvas.

Rounding out the Forbes Cash Queens Of Music top five, in case you were interested, were Shakira and Beyonce with earnings of $38m and $27m respectively. Proof then, that getting rich from being almost naked and jiggling around isn't something confined to the horrifically old.

Finally, let's not forget that Madonna is married to Guy Ritchie, so their household earnings must be incredible – we'd guess at least $72 million plus that £3.50 that Guy earnt cleaning windscreens at traffic lights last summer.

Read more:

Forbes.com dubs Madonna "Cash Queen of Music" – Reuters 

That's right – the annual Forbes Dead Celebrity Rich List has been published, and it's been another classic year for Elvis Presley. Elvis has managed to earn $49 million over the last year, $5 million more than his nearest rival John Lennon could muster. It's a triumphant return to the top spot for Elvis Presley, who was knocked into second place last year by Kurt Cobain, with industry experts claiming that this reflects the current public trend for favouring bloated corpses with blasted-open colons over miserable corpses with bits of their heads missing.

Elvis Presley has had quite the year. Ever since he died in 1977, the highlight of most of Elvis' years has been either when he decomposed especially slowly or when Toothless Bill the Graceland groundskeeper pounds on his grave and shouts "Guess how many times they've repackaged your Greatest Hits collection this year Elvis? Four!"

But this year was special. This year was the 30th Anniversary of Elvis Presley's death, which meant that not only did people steal his stuff and bury in a chemical toilet but they all rushed out and bought whatever Elvis-related tat his estate saw fit to hurl out, even though Elvis fans probably own it all in 25 slightly different formats anyway. And that's stood him in good stead for this year's annual Forbes Dead Celebrity Rich List, which has just been published.

You see, Elvis Presley is the daddy of rich dead celebrities. He's usually voted as the richest dead celebrity and only a last-ditch push to sell off 25% of Kurt Cobain's songwriting publishing beat him down into second place last year. But 2007 has been Elvis Presley's year, and the only way it could have been improved is if he hadn't killed himself trying to shit out a breezeblock three decades ago. He's rich, damnit! Rich! The Times reports:

Elvis earned $49 million (£24 million) in the past year, toppling the late Nirvana frontman and regaining the top spot on the Forbes.com list. Elvis’s estate continues to generate millions from music royalties, DVDs, licensing deals and tourism at Graceland, the singer’s mansion in Memphis. The website ranks 13 former celebrities according to income and proves that death is no obstacle to making money. The group collectively earnt $232 million in the past year.

Second to Elvis Presley this year was John Lennon, a man who started selling his songs online and got a giant beam of light named after him. Not that the light beam earnt him much money, of course, although Lennon is expected to top the Forbes annual 'Dead Celebrities With The Most Pointless Carbon Footprint' list when that's published next month. As for the rest of the list, it's mainly the usual suspects – Einstein, Schultz, Warhol – with the added inclusion of recently dead James Brown making his debut at number 11 with $5 million. We're sure that James Brown is thrilled by this, and thinks it more than makes up for the way congestive heart failure resulting from complications of pneumonia killed him on Christmas day.

Here's this year's list of the richest dead celebrities, according to Forbes: 

Elvis Presley $49 million
John Lennon $44 million
Charles M. Schulz $35 million
George Harrison $22 million
Albert Einstein $18 million
Andy Warhol $15 million
Theodor Geisel $13 million
Tupac Shakur $9 million
Marilyn Monroe $7 million
Steve McQueen $6 million
James Brown $5 million
Bob Marley $4 million
James Dean $3.5 million

Read more:

Dead Rich List All Shook Up As Elvis Returns To Top – Times