It's not easy being dumped, as the great Homer Simpson once remarked. It's all very well being told that you're single and ready to mingle, back on the market, or could do better anyways when all you want to do is curl up in your pyjamas with some maple walnut ice cream.

When people say it's not you, it's me, everyone knows they really mean it's you.

Hollywood celebs approach romance in the same way that they approach business. Some are impulsive. Some want it all. Some take calculated risks - but when it's over, it's over. So what becomes of the broken hearted when they've been left in the dust by a Hollywood superstar?

These days Britney Spears has plenty of problems, but the initial signal that the wheels could well fall off the Britneymobile were present in early 2004, when the pop tart tied the knot with her childhood friend Jason Alexander in dirty old Vegas.

The hour of the day that the happy couple got hitched would give you some indication of their state of mind - 5:30am. Britney wore jeans and a baseball cap, a hotel employee walked her down the aisle, and hell had no rage like her record company, manager and mama Lynn Spears when they found out what she'd done.

Jason's ass was quickly shipped home to Louisiana with some hush money and the marriage annulled two days later on the grounds that Brit Brit "lacked understanding of her actions." I'll say. In a later interview Jason told a British tabloid that he and Miz Spears had been on a cocktail of cocaine, Valium, ecstasy and Vicodin in the days leading up to the wedding and that 'relations' with her were like 'winning the sex lotto.'

Since then, Jason's briefly hooked up with Shar Jackson, K-Fed's ex, violated his confidentiality agreement, and was ‘forced' to give up his dream of being a professional sportsman. The dream to grow the world's biggest monobrow, however, remains intact.

Jennifer Lopez is known around Tinseltown as one woman who knows what she wants and how to get it. As a fresh face on the Hollywood scene La Lopez was swept off her feet by Cuban waiter and aspiring actor Ojani Noa, whom she met while filming a movie on location in Miami. Never one to waste time, Lopez married Noa in 1997 and divorced in early 1998.

After their split, Noa went on to manage J-Lo's Pasadena restaurant, Madre's, but relations soured between the pair when he attempted to hawk a book detailing the juicy bits of life with Lopez. He was permanently gagged in 2006.

But onwards and upwards for Jenny, who got back on the horse in September 2001 with choreographer Cris Judd, who she met on the set of her new video 'Love Don't Cost A Thing.' She was a liar, obviously, as within a matter of months Judd had had to fork out his entire year's salary on an engagement ring.

They honeymooned at Donatella Versace's in Italy, but it was all over rover in June 2002. Lopez was seen stepping out with Mr Chinny Chin Chin, Ben Affleck, immediately afterwards.

Still, Cris knows which side his bread is buttered and has stayed on the right side of La Lopez. Since the split he's done a spot of acting, produced a Las Vegas musical and won the American game show I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here.

The Cold Hearted Snake award goes to Tori Spelling. The some time actress and full-time Daddy's girl tied the knot with actor-writer Charlie Shanian in front of 400 guests at her parent's humungous Beverly Hills estate. Wolfgang Puck did the catering and everything was going along nicely, til Tori met Canadian moocher Dean McDermott on the set of a TV movie - and informed Charlie it was all over via the family therapist.

Charlie bounced back relatively well from Torigate, is now glad to be rid of her, and returned to theatre and improv work.

They may be the girls that have it all, but Nicky Hilton is the sister with one big false start under her belt. In August 2004 20-year-old Nicky married family friend and New York money manager Todd Meister in Las Vegas, in a move US editor Janice Min called ‘pulling a Britney.'

Nicky would later tell a magazine that sister Paris orchestrated everything, which wouldn't surprise me since it all went down the pan three months later. If you can get over the icky thought that when Meister was 18, Nicky was 5, the couple annulled and remain friends, with the ex-Mr Hilton quietly returning to his moneyed New York lifestyle.

Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan were the Brad and Jen of the mid-1980s. With their toothsome grins, matching frosted hairdos and their on-screen adventures as Neighbours duo Scott and Charlene, there was no stopping the Ocker pair. And don't even start on their duet 'Especially For You,' the 10-year-old's soundtrack to 1989.

But alas! Kylie fell under the spell of leather-clad rock and roller Michael Hutchence, the sexy Yin to Donovan's cheesy Yang. Kylie turned into a little sexpot herself, and Jason went on to tread the London boards in musicals like Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He also ended up doing a long dance with the devil's dandruff, becoming a full-blown cokehead. He's now been clean for six years, has a missus and two kids, and voiced the host of video quiz game Buzz.

It's fair to say Billy Wayne Smith wasn't really going places as a 16-year-old cook at Jim's Krispy Fried Chicken shack in the small town of Mexia, Texas. Billy got hitched that year to 17-year-old waitress Vickie Lynn Hogan, later to pick up the bleach bottle, add some implants, and become Anna Nicole Smith.

Vickie and Billy had a son, Daniel, and she left him the next year and moved to the big city to try her luck as a stripper in Houston. Vicky appeared in Playboy married an octogenarian billionaire, and died tragically earlier this year at the age of 39.

Remember the year 2000? The last ever Peanuts strip is published, Brad and Jen became Mr and Mrs Pitt, and, for a brief moment in time, people found Tom Green funny. Yes, I do feel sorry for him as he has only one testicle. But Freddy Got Fingered? Give me strength!

The next year the overrated Canadian married actress girlfriend Drew Barrymore, and split five months later for reasons which still remain vague. She moved on to the hunky Fabrizio Moretti and to become a bigshot Hollywood producer, he is still chasing that elusive joke that works. The divorce was Drew's second, having been hitched to bar owner Jeremy Thomas for a whole month in 1994.

What are your thoughts on the state of Hollywood romances? Let me know.