Did you hear what happens this week in Eastenders? Are Nicole Kidman and Robbie Williams just good friends? Have you seen Sara Cox's wedding dress? Did you see the state of Geri Halliwell? And as for Narinder from Big Brother, like hello...

Conversations, more and more these days, seem to revolve around the trivialities of celebrities' lives, loves and collagen lips. In a world where celebrities are regarded as the new royalty, Posh and Becks rule. In a world where religion is seen as boring, Madonna sells magazines.

Celebrities adorn the cover of most magazines aimed at the female, teenage, film-going, pop music-loving, soap-watching audience. Celebrity watching is the new hobby of choice, practised over a cup of tea and a magazine between the ad-breaks.

In the past, celebrities were film stars or rock stars. They were the rich and the famous. Things have changed and now anyone who has ever had even the slightest brush with notoriety can be a "celebrity".

It is unclear whether the increase in their numbers spawned a plethora of celebrity-driven magazines or whether a plethora of celebrity-driven magazine spawned a new generation of celebrities.

Lisa Gaughran, editor of WHO, an Irish celebrity magazine, says that people have always been fascinated by the concept of celebrity, and that they're not necessarily more interested than before. "However, the appetite to consume information about celebrity has grown larger due to these previously inaccessible people becoming accessible through mediums such as celebrity titles," she says.

The other two celebrity magazines in the Irish market are VIP - an Irish version of Britain's Hello! and OK! magazines - and TVNow - which concentrates on the stars and plots of soap operas. All three use famous faces, both national and international, on the front cover to whet the appetites of the celebrity-hungry and entice them to make a purchase.

According to publisher Michael O'Doherty, VIP interviews are centred on celebrities and their homes. It is a is a "get-to-know thing" about a particular celebrity, he says. TVNow magazine is more gossip-oriented, he says.

Now magazine is a British woman's weekly with a celebrity engine. The magazine is always increasing its print order for this State. It is so popular here that the publishers considered changing the cover for the Irish edition, but it was found that the Irish readership likes the same celebrities as they do in Britain.

The magazine appeals to the "16 to 35, young and outgoing" market, says editor Jane Ennis. She agrees there seems to be more interest in celebrities than ever before. Now does not have the same deep pockets that Hello! and OK! do and, instead, tends to dig around for stories itself, using contacts and so on. "We don't have a quarter of a million to pay for a wedding, but we do have our fair share of exclusives," says Ennis.

The issue of the magazine that is out today has the magazine exclusive of the pictures and story of the Big Brother baby.

Exclusives are a way of life when it comes to celebrity news - especially celebrity weddings. Legal action related to these "exclusives" seems to make the news as much as the huge sums paid to celebrities for exclusives.

A few months ago, Hello! Magazine said it was going to sue the Irish Star newspaper for publishing unauthorised photographs of Pierce Brosnan's wedding in Ashford castle. The photographs were taken by Hello! photographers and the magazine had paid a lot to have the world exclusive. Ironically, the Star is part-owned by the same organisation as Hello!'s arch-rival, OK!

As such exclusives hugely increase readership, both magazines are believed to have open chequebooks above and beyond other magazines.

When it comes to exclusives of all sorts, there is often a scramble between magazines and tabloid newspapers to obtain photographs. Only last year, OK! got an injunction against Hello! regarding the wedding of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones. OK! had the exclusive rights, while Hello! bought snatched shots of the wedding.

For many people, September 11th changed a lot. Because of the shock factor and gravity of the attacks on the US, it was thought that many people would be done with trivial news of the lives of celebrities.

Piers Morgan, editor of the Mirror, told fellow newspaper editors in Britain, that September 11th had "redefined tabloid newspapers in as dramatic a way as it will redefine American foreign policy". He said that the future for newspapers is looking rosier than when someone called Bubble (of Big Brother) hit the front pages for being, essentially, an unbelievably stupid man. But life goes on and celebrities are back in the news, even in the US.

All it took, according to a USA Today report, was J Lo in a wedding dress. After three covers devoted to terrorism, People magazine put Jennifer Lopez on the cover.

"I think readers still care about the rich and famous. We thought: 'Hey, this is a happy event, she's a big star, why not?'" People's managing editor Carol Wallace recently told USA Today.

Recent Auditing Bureau of Circulation figures show that the biggest rise in sales has been in the celebrity magazine market.

The relationship between celebrities and the media has been described as oscillating - continually swinging between love and hate. But as no news is bad news - if celebrities are being talked about because they are seen looking fat or seen doing something stupid, at least they are being talked about. They have a symbiotic relationship - one feeds off the other. As long as they enjoy this mutual dependency, we will have celebrity magazines.