That Britney Spears. I love her deeply, but she’s given me nothing but trouble and strife since day one.

First there was the schoolgirl/jailbait thing, then the series of undesirable boyfriends and marriages (the first one – annulled after 55 hours – looked like a model of probity and wisdom compared with Kevin Federline), Kabbalah, Madonna-snogging, mental breakdown, custody battles and psychiatric care. She’s caused me more worry, that girl, than all of the Spice Girls and Girls Aloud combined.

But almost never more so than now, after the announcement that her fiancé (and former manager) Jason Trawick is to become, like her father and lawyer, one of her conservators – someone with control of her finances. Partly because it has all the hallmarks of needy insecurity – supporting someone’s bid to have joint custody of your assets feels like the celebrity equivalent of agreeing to throw away all photos of your ex or go the full Brazilian, when you’d rather maintain your natural Mr- Tumnus-the-Narnian-Faun look, to please the new one – which suggests that she still has some issues to work on. But mainly because it is so emblematic of the female approach to money, and because the female approach to money drives me nuts.

The approach, in essence, is to let the men take care of it. You don’t have to go anywhere near Spears-style celebritydom to see this. I’ve never been more shocked than I was by the reaction of mothers to the news last year than the government was going to cut child benefit. “But it’s the only money I can call my own/spend without asking/not have to explain where it went!” came the cries. Cries, primarily (the media being what it is), from middle-class women who had previously earned their own money, are in long-term, stable relationships with the fathers of their children but who still, apparently, live in a world where what’s his is his and what’s hers is a concept without meaning.

“How women deal with money drives me nuts”