Adnan Ghalib, the paparazzo who sleeps with Britney Spears while snagging footage to sell to the tabloids, may be one of the sleaziest characters to emerge in the celebrity industry in recent years. But one has to admire the former Afghan refugee's desperate skill in walking the tightrope between his troubled popstar lover and the media that feeds on her. According to Showbiz Spy, the mercenary pap wants a $2m payoff for video of Spears at her most vulnerable, weeping, and speaking in the third person. "When Britney was a child, she had to work really hard. When she was 13 years old, she won all the beauty pageants," she mumbles to the camera. "Britney has an angel looking out for her, don't you, angel?" Of course, Ghalib's paparazzi rivals are delighted to expose his double-game, in the hope of breaking his access to the tabloid-selling popstar. Meanwhile, lawyers for Spears' former husband have been investigating a deal between pap agency X17 and another Britney confidante. (Tough game, celebrity journalism: these people make the warlords in Ghalib's native Afghanistan look like saints.) After the jump, a bonus, a scene from Sweet Smell of Success, the best ever cinematic treatment of the vicious world of celebrity gossip, in which Sidney Falco, the press agent played by Tony Curtis, is turned against his own client.