You know that time you had a protracted two-hour argument with your girlfriend about the hoovering? JK Rowling earnt £36,000 during that.

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.

It's so easy to become richer than your wildest dreams – all you need is a mockney husband, a giant glittery crucifix and a ghastly purple leotard that shows off your old lady's tumpsy in more detail than anyone really wanted.

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