Kantar Media ran the numbers this week and named Madonna – and not the one whose reported eldest child most Christians will be celebrating on Saturday – as the most talked-about celebrity in the UK press of the past decade. Britain, we need to talk.

Madonna was (formerly) primarily a musician (and secondly a mediocre actress) who, in her heyday, generated some publicity about her relationships (see also Penn, Sean) but mostly about her artistic choices: her coffee-table book Sex, being banned from MTV for her videos, gyrating on the floor in a white dress and even, on occasion, her music (see also Sondheim, Stephen). But this decade brought a dearth of artistic choices worthy of celebration – her camel-toe-highlighting leotard in Hung Up was not artistically equivalent to the bondage outfits in Human Nature, and neither was the song – and, instead, a number of "shocking", tabloid-friendly moments meant to engender attention for Madonna the Celebrity kept her in the public eye. Personally, I blame Britain – not the British, mind you, just Britain, for doing this to the Madonna of the 90s.

So how did she make the list?

1 The Duchess Of Madge Being happily married to Guy Ritchie isn't headline-worthy, but bollocksing up plays, taking on a fake accent, playing an English gentlewoman and generally being the Madge that the tabloids loved to hate certainly was. It's as if the tabloids just couldn't stand to have the blue-collar girl from Detroit who posed nude all done up in jodhpurs and tweed and playing at the fantasy of Good Old England. Oh, and the accent. No one needed to hear that, but everyone loved talking about it.

2 The Britney Kiss For a woman reputed to have had previous same-sex relationships, who shocked music award show audiences long before almost any other artist had thought of it, sticking her tongue down Britney Spears's throat should have elicited more eye-rolling from the tabloids (and the audience) than headlines. I mean, doing the same to Christina Aguilera – a ménage à trois with three women? – should certainly have done so. And yet, kissing Britney on cue was a picture and a headline no one could resist, for some reason, despite audiences' resistance to American Life."

3 The religion Kaballah, also known as mystical-Judaism-for-celebrities, became a source of fascination to Madonna, and her fascination with it became fascinating to fans. Yoga! Vitamins! Special water! Red strings! No one cared more about Madonna's religious choices (including Madonna, probably) than the press.

4 The adoption Was it legal? Was it necessary? Was it good for David? Was it colonialism? And why didn't people slag off Angelina Jolie like that? Only Angelina's biological offspring spawned more of a tabloid frenzy than Madonna's adoption of David Banda, and people just couldn't get enough.

5 The boy toys Few things last for ever, especially celebrity marriages, and (sadly) Madonna's to Guy Ritchie was no different. But the quiet, mature-seeming divorce was dwarfed by tabloid headlines about her reported dalliance with the baseball-playing A-Rod and, of course, Jesus Luz. Here's the woman who practically invented having boy toys – anyone remember Lourdes's father, trainer Carlos Leon? – and the press just went crazy when she got herself a new one after her divorce.

But the music? That, clearly, was not what got Madonna press this decade.