Sick of Hannah Montana

Am I the only parent who's sick of seeing that sugar-coated smile and perfect hair that is teen sensation, Miley Cyrus?

Cyrus, precocious daughter of one-hit-wonder Billy Ray, is everywhere. I can't escape from her. Bugger me, please give me a break.

I have a couple of teenage daughters (one of whom is completely taken with the hidden superstar, Hannah Montanna) so entering the living room after school and before bed is a tenuous dance preceded by some careful listening at the door for some tinny American squawks.

Why, you might ask, should I have a problem with the ultimate queen of clean?

It's because she's an actress and like all characters, her lines are written for her. What we (or rather our children) see is not Miley Cyrus, it's a phoney; and the real Miss Cyrus is heading off in a different direction.

It's not the controversial photos taken by Annie Leibovitz that bother me; Cyrus-Disney Inc.'s PR machine covered that to death, it's the other photographs that surface from time to time including one of Cyrus posing seductively on a webcam (she was 15 at the time) and another taken by a Pap showing her licking her teeth at her then boyfriend (she was 16).

Cyrus is a Christian (OOOOH please, get me the sick bucket) just like another MTVeen favourite, Jamie Lynn Spears (younger sister of Britney "no-knickers" Spears) of Zoe 101 fame. When Spears infamously became pregnant at 16, the PR machine denied the story, "She was a good Christian girl, and wouldn't do that sort of thing."

Well she did and she was, subsequently giving birth to daughter, Maddie Briann Aldridge.

Now, I'm not suggesting for a minute that Cyrus is pregnant, just that we only have to look at how child stars invariably descend into drugs and worse when age closes in and fame fades. Examples include the dreadful Macaulay Culkin and Drew Barrymore but history is littered with them.

What I am concerned with is that we're giving vulnerable kids the wrong idea about reality - just like soap operas and daytime bullshit-pedlars like Jeremy Kyle do for adults.

(Good grief, I'm starting to sound like my dad!)