Certain clever-clogs might like to point out that WAGS are not solely a modern-day phenomenon though to the best of our knowledge Billy Wright’s missus, Joy from the Beverley Sisters, never stumbled out of Chinawhites pissed-up wearing a glorified tea-towel while the only Brazilian Bobby Moore’s other half knew about was Pele.

While we may like to patronise previous generations for their innocence with their lack of foreign travel and their outside toilets their perception of fame was pretty much bang-on. Those with talent was respected. Those with exceptional talent was revered. Those who shared their bed at night was irrelevant. These days we’ve sadly regressed to the point where every aspect of a well-known individual is of supposed relevance to us; even the person they love.

Dislike them or loathe them however the player’s wives and girlfriends are here to stay, orange, vacuous and bafflingly becoming celebrities in their own right.

Here are ten of the worst.

10/ Lizzie Cundy

The idea of anyone being even vaguely famous purely because they are betrothed to a sportsman remains a surreal development. When that sportsman is Jason Cundy it transcends to farce. Jason Cundy? Even the famous one of the duo probably has to Google search himself each morning to recall who the hell he is.

“Blimey, I played for Spurs! Ah, only 18 times.”

9/ Sandra Evra

To her credit Sandra Evra doesn’t particularly seek out the limelight. Then again her reserve is understandable when you’re wed to one of the most detestable individuals on the planet and your eyes are so far apart one has to Fed-Ex the other to tell it to blink.

8/ Helen Flanagan

Someone get the girl a stylist for Christ’s sake. The ex-Corrie sex strumpet is slowly turning into a blow-up doll bride of Frankenstein.

Regularly parades her hefty puppies for the paps then plays coy in the gossip mags declaring that she doesn’t know what all the fuss is about.

That nails-down-a-whiteboard sound you hear is a million women grinding their teeth with pure hatred.

7/ Alexandra Burke

The latest cock-pocket for the midget lothario Jermaine Defoe whose rat-up-a-drainpipe antics surely merits an award for Outstanding Services to Shallow Dating. If only he could score with the same regularity with his boots on. We’ve got nothing against Burke per ce – although she does bear rather an unfortunate resemblance to John Fashanu – but she makes this list based purely on the tedious unoriginality of the match-up; her career is on the wane and suddenly there she is making the tabloids again on the arm of Rent-a-Sword.

Oh and we’ve just remembered that she warbled to death Hallelujah. She should be higher thinking about it.

6/ Colleen Rooney

To paraphrase Mrs Merton, tell me Colleen, why did you repeatedly forgive the multi-millionaire fame ticket Wayne for his numerous flings with skanky prostitutes?

This aside she seems like a decent down-to-earth lass to be fair though he fact that she has her own perfume makes us yearn for a nuclear bomb like Mozzer on a Sunday.

5/ Alex Curran

We all know the rumours. I’ll leave it there.

4/ Abbey Clancy

Admittedly she is a stunning specimen of womanhood and deserves huge credit for her charitable ventures – namely marrying an ugly beanpole freak. But that voice! A Scouse accent can often sound singy, friendly, cheeky or clued-up. Hers is so grating you want to punch off your own ears and pour wet cement down the holes.

She reportedly once said her ambition was to “marry a footballer, get pregnant and then shop for the rest of my life”. Germaine Greer she ain’t.

Her presenting aspirations ran aground when it was discovered she had the intelligence of a broken radiator.

3/ Danielle Lloyd

With Teddy Sheringham, Marcus Bent, Jermaine Defoe and now Jamie O’Hara all having ridden the Lloyd Express it can safely be assumed the personality vacuum slash model is a serial wag addicted to the thrill of being hated by everyone on sight. The others soon got bored of the mind-numbing ennui in between bouts of filthy sex. The pock-marked O’Hara however was so grateful at having someone attractive to fritter all his wages on St Tropez tans and Christian Louboutin slingbacks that he knocked her up. Twice.

2/ Louise Redknapp

Ahh lovely Lou with her girl-next-door sweetness and light. Forget for one minute the smug Thomas Cook ads that make you wish her and Literally Jamie – all washboard-stomachs and tedium – got a horrible case of the shits in their exotic idyll and consider her atrocious presenting skills. Even after several years of only having to stand in front of a camera and talk – a simple task even Paul Merson has managed to partly master – she continues to overly-depend on the autocue reading it out like a stroke victim relearning the alphabet. ‘And coming up after…..this…..what?…..Simon makes apples….crumble. Ooo Jamie likes pudding!’

1/ Jadene Bircham

The wife of retired former QPR midfielder Marc made the news a few years back when she signed up to a racist Facebook group entitled ‘If you don’t like England then f**k off back to where you came from’. Considering that her hubby is Canadian perhaps they had a fight that morning? But no, apparently the designer-clad bigot signed up because “I read it and I thought it would be quite funny”.

The group’s homepage featured a picture of a hooded Ku Klux Klan member and topics included “Does anyone find Muslim females attractive?”, “Hands up if you believe Enoch Powell was right” and “Black ethnic groups are more likely to be criminal”. Nice.