Who needs talent when you're a reality star?

Kim Kardashian. Photo / AP

In Oxford St, hundreds of teenage girls caked in makeup push against the firmly closed side entrance of Debenhams.

Nearby, a sexagenarian woman with a clipboard barks instructions at an army of nubile ladies wearing violet mini-dresses and clutching little glass violet perfume bottles. "When she arrives, I want all of you in the crowd spraying," she orders.

After a long wait, a black Range Rover pulls up. The door opens, and suddenly the air is on fire with a noise like a billion lobsters being boiled alive.

The crack unit in violet springs into action, but their frenzied dousing does nothing to abate the excitement of those who have waited, many overnight, for a glimpse of the world's most famous backside.

Socialite, model, actress, campaigner, reality star, blogger, entrepreneur. So reads Kim Kardashian's list of occupations, confirming her as possibly the brightest star of the post-Jade Goody firmament.

In a world where an absolute lack of any discernible talent has been firmly established as no barrier to fame and fortune - and where the greater the number of a person's stated professions, the less it seems they can actually do - Kardashian, and her sisters Kourtney and Khloe, are the undisputed masters.

Many might be forgiven for never having heard of her. But viewers of entertainment channel E! or regular readers of tabloid newspapers, showbiz and gossip columns would probably recognise her voluminous posterior from space. Glamour magazine this week named her its Entrepreneur of the Year.

The Kardashian name first entered the public consciousness way back in 1994, when Kim's now deceased father, Armenian-American lawyer Robert Kardashian, provided room and lodgings to his friend O.J. Simpson in the days after the murder of his ex-wife and her alleged lover.

Kardashian would later form part of Simpson's defence team during the so-called "trial of the century". But it was a 2007 reality TV show called Keeping Up With the Kardashians that propelled the entire family - and particularly middle daughter Kim - into the dubious glare of the celebrity limelight, where they have remained ever since, becoming arguably the most-discussed family in America.

Kim has since appeared as a judge on the United States version of The Apprentice, launched perfumes and other products, and appealed to President Barack Obama to recognise the Armenian Genocide of1915.

She is also easy on the eye.

Keeping Up With the Kardashians, which starred the sisters alongside their mother and her new husband, Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete Bruce Jenner, is among the most popular in the US. It was hardly the first, or best, show of its type when it opened in 2007, but the intrigue had been stoked somewhat by the "leaking" some months earlier of a less-than-amateurish sex tape of then 26-year-old Kim and rapper Ray J.

This week the Kardashian circus' biggest act arrived in London. Kim may be less well known in Britain, but still drew the crowds.

"She's amazing. She's what every girl wants to be," said Jessica, 20, from Horsham, who had slept on the pavement outside Debenhams to be among the sacred 150 who would be granted a chance to meet their idol, provided they had forked out the requisite £29. 95 ($60) for a bottle of her perfume.

"She's got fragrances, she's got a shoe line, she's got her own reality TV show."

- INDEPENDENT