IF there is something inexplicably fascinating about the super-rich and super-famous, there is nevertheless an awful seediness in the details of their money matters.
So a book that digs into how a particular sports celebrity, chef, fashion designer - or even a business person - handles his or her millions elicits a queasy mix of curiosity and grimaces.
The Rich and Famous Money Book: Investment Strategies of Leading Celebrities (John Wiley & Sons, US$19.95) yields an odd harvest of people willing to talk about this most delicate of matters with author Jean Sherman Chatzky, a senior writer with SmartMoney magazine and a television personality in her own right. For every one person who agreed to talk, six others flatly refused.
Reading about other people's money is rather like going through their underwear drawers in the company of Oprah Winfrey, that queen of communal navel-gazing.
The point of chasing down 28 interviews was, apparently, to allow lesser mortals to draw useful lessons from the investment strategies employed by the hugely successful - perhaps so that, in future, glory and moolah can be spread more equitably.
Thus, we learn that humourist Dave Barry stacks up healthy profits from real-estate transactions, largely because he doubts the stock markets. Ivana Trump, ex-wife of real-estate developer Donald, has already raked in sizeable gains from her US$25 million divorce settlement through investments in bonds, stocks and mutual funds. And so on.
From these stories, the average investor is somehow to pick out valuable lessons. This is a dubious theory.