Oh, it's tough being on telly. After all, Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag – the world's two most celebrated talent vortexes – recently stormed off the US version of I'm A Celebrity after just one episode, claiming that they were "too rich and too famous" to spend any more time nibbling marsupial bumholes with Janice Dickinson and Stephen Baldwin. But which other celebs are big quitters?
Well, our version of I'm A Non-Entity saw the early exit of John Lydon, who sensationally quit the show citing the producers' "appalling" refusal to let him know whether his wife's flight had landed. Did he really think her plane might have crashed? Or did he just want to get out of there before Jordan "went down" instead? We guess we'll never know.
Fancy being pawed at by thick rapper Coolio? Well, bad-tempered Sugababes chomper Mutya Buena certainly didn't care for his party hands, and ended up quitting the Celebrity Big Brother house in order to swerve his drooling advances. Mutya has since gone back to obscurity, and Coolio got away with the harassment. Wish he'd tried it on with Tina Malone instead.
If there's one thing better than locking a bunch of no-mark celebs in a compound, it's filling one with ex-reality "stars" who reckon they're wise to the producers' games. Nemesis of cutlery Uri Geller spent seven deeply paranoid days in the Back To Reality mansion, fretting about potential moles and the microphones in the bathroom, before bending the rules and leaving early.
We know that the show's called 24, but isn't quitting your high-profile new role after just one day's filming a case of taking things rather too literally? The sixth series of the show ended up doing without one-time executive transvestite Eddie Izzard, who threw in that Bauer towel just hours into his contract in favour of a lead role in The Riches – a show often praised, but little watched.
Isaac Hayes had no problem taking the mick out of Christians, Muslims, Mormons or Jews in his time voicing the Chef on potty-mouthed sitcom South Park. But he sensationally quit the series in 2006 citing his displeasure at a storyline mocking Scientology. Creator Matt Stone said: "He got a sudden case of religious sensitivity when it was his religion featured on the show."
"Pressure", barks Sir Alan Sugar. "Can you bladdy 'andle it?" Well, it turned out that Rupert Everett can't, as the actor quit the Comic Relief version of The Apprentice after just a day. "That guy, Sir Donald Sugarbeet or whatever he was called, was so hideous," Rupert mirthlessly explained. "It made me feel that perhaps I should throw myself out of the window." We'd have donated for that.
She's been on strike more times than a tube driver, but the final blow to Sharon Osbourne's X Factor career was the presence of the less old, less hatchet-faced and way less crabby Dannii Minogue. The Grand High Witch of Watford is still slagging Dannii off two years later, recently describing her as "a mosquito you want to flick away". Let it go, love!
Saturday teatime on the Beeb hasn't been without its shock departures either. John Sergeant was roundly dissed for his galumphing by judges but kept in by the punters, and he eventually decided to walk out rather than win. "Even for me that would be a joke too far", he explained. Two thousand people complained about his exit; perhaps that's the biggest joke of all.
They say that a kitchen is a high-pressure environment – especially under the auspices of Marco Pierre White. And the most recent series of Hell's Kitchen proved to be too much for Bruce Grobbelaar, who claimed that he missed his wife too much to spend any more time flipping burgers with Grant Bovey and Miss Dynamite. Well, if you can't stand the heat...