Forget the woman that Michael Jackson wants to look like, at the peak of her stardom, Elizabeth Taylor was one of the sexiest people ever to have walked the Earth. Her striking beauty wowed Hollywood, and the world, in such films as Giant (1956), Raintree County (1957), Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) and Butterfield 8 (1960). Taylor was paid a colossal $1m in 1963 to star in Cleopatra, where she met husband number five Richard Burton. Their stormy romance steamed up tabloid papers across the globe.

The King of sex symbols in music, Elvis is still the most attractive man in pop years after his death. When the young Elvis brought rock'n'roll into the mainstream singing for RCA Records in the 1950s, his gyrating hips created hysteria in a whole generation of teenage girls. So frightened of his sexual power was conservative America, that TV companies were banned from filming him below the waist. Elvis had sold over 600m records by the time he died, and probably seduced nearly as many women.