The worlds of business and showbusiness have never been the easiest of bedfellows. When the going is good, the pair have snuggled up, sometimes successfully. For example, Anna Ford has brought cachet and experience to the board of Sainsbury’s, while Mothercare has benefited from the boardroom input of Birmingham City’s Karren Brady.

But there are more examples of things not quite working out as hoped, often in the lower reaches of the stock market. Shares of Hot Tuna, the surf-based fashion company listed on the Alternative Investment Market, halved during the 17 months when the model Elle Macpherson was an executive director.

The footballer-turned-TV-personality Ian Wright famously endorsed Arthur Shaw — a dot-com company that had the idea of webcasting Lennox Lewis fights and Spice Girl concerts — and was one of many investors who lost money when it ran out of cash. More recently, the events management company Three’s A Crowd — which boasted the professional celebrity Tara Palmer-Tomkinson as a director for nine months — has also disappointed investors.

While celebrity input can spell the kiss of death for a business, the same is true in reverse. Celebrities, like many of us, choose not to spend much time on their finances. Unlike most, though, they can afford to leave it to experts. This can lead to tears.

Sir Elton John, for instance, was landed with an £8 million legal bill in 2001 after suing his former manager and accountant PricewaterhouseCoopers unsuccessfully over millions of pounds he believed he should never have paid in touring costs.

Five years ago a number of US stars, including Cameron Diaz, Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck and Bob Dylan, lost $11 million between them in an investment scam by a confidence trickster who posed as a financial manager.

More recently, the singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen went back on the road to try to recoup some of the £6.2 million stolen from him by his manager in the early 1990s.

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