Before they were famous

From size tens to top tens

Irish heart-throb Ronan Keating also endured an ill-advised proximity to people's feet after landing a job as a sales assistant at Dublin shoe shop Corky's.

He went on to join the band Boyzone at the age of 16 and has since notched up more than a dozen top ten singles and three number one albums as a solo artist. It is estimated that Ronan has now clocked up more than £40 million in royalties.

He recently admitted that he was in his element selling shoes because he was obsessed with looking good and 'bought a new pair every week'. He now claims to have around 70 pairs, half of which he's 'only worn once'.

Jack of all trades, master of rock

Rod Stewart had similarly humble beginnings. As a youngster he was football mad but his destiny was sealed when, on his 14th birthday, his dad gave him a guitar.

He tirelessly practiced his musical skills in his North London bedroom, in between jobs as a paper boy, fence mender and gravedigger in Highgate Cemetery.

In his late teens, during which he was deported from Spain for vagrancy while busking in Barcelona, he landed his first job as a singer, earning £35 a week with Long John Baldry's Hoochie Coochie Men.

Now the Scottish rock icon, 62, who was awarded a CBE in 2006 and is famed for a string of hits including Maggie May, You Wear It Well and Sailing, has far exceeded his own early teenage ambitions.

'Then, I just wanted to stick in a job for six months and save up £300 to buy an Austin Healey sports car so I could pull the birds,' he admits.

Do you want a flake with that?

Fellow rocker Mick Jagger also worked his way up from the bottom, starting out as a porter in a psychiatric hospital.

But despite the often depressing nature of his work, the snake-hipped singer still managed to give it a rock-n-roll edge by losing his virginity on the job.

Jagger, 63, who was knighted in 2003 for his services to popular music, later claimed it was with a nurse in a hospital broom cupboard.

As he was growing up in Dartford, Kent, he also took a summer as an ice cream seller. It is hard to imagine the singer, as famed for his womanising as he is for his rubber lips, serving 99 flakes.

Deep fat (high) fliers

Many a star climbing the slippery slope to fame and fortune has got their hands dirty in the food industry.

Jon Bon Jovi did a stint at Burger King, while Annie Lennox utilised a summer break working in a frozen fish factory and Ozzy Osbourne was (fittingly) a slaughterhouse worker.