Music fans who saw in 2006 with cheerful optimism were dealt a blow this week with the news that heiress Paris Hilton it launching a pop career. Major record label Warner Bros is investing a considerable sum of money in promoting her as the new Kylie Minogue, while the Aussie pop princess completes her recovery from breast cancer.

The label has made the 24-year-old heir to the Hilton hotel fortune a priority for this year and her forthcoming album is slated for April.

Reportedly entitled 'Paris Is Burning', it has already committed a faux pas in the light of the recent French riots. It also illustrates a classic tactic used by record companies; take a famous, attractive girl, give her the best songwriters, throw money at her, stir in some saucy pictures and wham - big profits.

Does anyone remember Naomi Campbell's short lived pop career? How about lads' mag favourite Caprice? Few can have fond memories of Jordan's Eurovision debacle. The fact is, no amount of money has ever been able to buy talent or long-term success.

After elevating her titles of "socialite" and "celebutante" to the status of professions, Paris, in her recent Autobiography, Confessions Of An Heiress, offered the following sage advice: "Always tell everyone what they want to hear. The do what you want."

Paris became notorious when a video of her having sex with her then boyfriend, Rick Salomon, when she was 19, was splashed all over the internet and subsequently came out on DVD.

Paris seems to have been busy, signing up Kylie Minogue's team. She has hired pop songwriter Cathy Dennis, who wrote 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head', and Kara DioGuardi, writer of 'Spinning Around', has written Paris's debut single 'Screwed'.

Paris describes it as "a girl who really falls for a guy and knows she's emotionally in too deep and in trouble, so she's 'screwed'". She goes on to say that having heard it before recording it, she didn't think about the song's double meaning.

Perhaps the reason Paris had heard the song before is that it had already been recorded by Haylie Duff for her debut American album. Paris gazumped her by recording her own version. The record was "leaked" to a radio station and from there to the internet, beating Haylie to the punch.

Paris pulled a similar trick with one of her friend's boyfriends recently. After calling off her engagement to Greek shipping heir Paris Latsis she took up with another Greek shipping heir, Stavros Niarchos. Until then he had been the long-term love of actress Mary-Kate Olsen. Actress Sophia Bush last week blamed Paris for the break-up of her marriage to actor Chad Michael Murray (who co-starred with Paris in her horror film debut 'House Of Wax').

In Paris's Reality TV show 'The Simple Life', she gained a catchprase of sorts - "that's hot!" - as if no one had ever uttered the words before. She has reportedly applied to trademark "that's hot!" and plans to print in on merchandise.