Madonna financial record breaker

Pop Queen Madonna has been awarded a Guinness World Record for being the highest paid female singer on the planet.

The pop diva, who has gone through countless re-inventions, has knocked Britney Spears off the top spot raking in an estimated $50 million US dollars (£26.6 million) in 2004.

Britney had managed to hold on to the record since 2001, when she entered the Guinness World Records (GWR), earning 38.5 million US dollars (£20.5 million) in 2000.

The singer joins James Blunt, the Arctic Monkeys, Simon Cowell and a host of other people who are included in the Guinness World Records 2007 book. In total 2,244 new records were set in 2005.

Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief of the book, said: "We've got a really strong mix of absolutely everything we could think of from wacky sports as well as serious news and politics."

Blunt's Back to Bedlam scooped the award for the most albums sold in a year in the UK with 2,368,000 copies in 2005. The Arctic Monkeys had the fastest selling UK debut album with Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not selling 363,735 copies in its first week and 113,000 on its first day.

Simon Cowell is the highest paid TV talent show judge earning £18 million, Jamie Oliver is the highest paid chef with an estimated annual income of £4.8 million and Ricky Gervais is the most downloaded podcast.document.write(unescape("