Inside the Strictly star to bestseller pipeline

What's behind the BBC dance floor becoming a publishing hotspot - and, in the age of AI, does it matter who really writes the work we read?

Hello! Part two on the (hell of) shopping theme, and my personal and hard-won (read: expensive) guide to surviving it all, will be coming. But before that, an interruption to normal programming, after a movie star got flack for announcing she’d be putting out a children’s book:

That came shortly after I read another Strictly cast member has a dance-themed novel coming out. That makes at least four authors among the cast now, by my count, as judges Craig, Shirley and Anton have put out dance-themed novels too.

They join a long tradition of celebrity novelists from A-listers like Carrie Fisher and Tom Hanks, to reality stars such as Lauren Conrad and the Kardashians. And don’t forget the prolific Katie Price aka Jordan (or, perhaps more accurately, her ghostwriter - and we’ll get to that).

However you feel about it, celebrity publishing is going nowhere - public figures have built up huge platforms that support their book sales and, like it or not, publishing is an industry. Arguably, big…