There was a time in the history of celebrity worship when a simple autograph sufficed. Then, as Summer Roberts remarked in The OC, getting a picture with a star on your camera phone became “the autograph for the 21st century”.

In recent years, however, fans have gone to greater lengths — or new lows — to own a piece of their favourite celeb, a process made possible by the explosion of online auction sites.

Last week, one such bidding forum in New Zealand came under fire when a lock of Princess Diana’s hair was put up with an asking price of e400. The site’s owners were forced to remove the snip of hair — which Diana had taped inside a book of poetry and given to a friend in 1995 — because it violated the ban on selling body parts online.

But this royal follicle folly is just one in a series of bizarre and downright disturbing purchases that have been made on sites such as eBay, where it is a case of one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.

So if you’re the type of devoted fan who wants to own Paris Hilton’s used dental floss, or a soiled tissue from Britney Spears, then all you have to do is get clicking.

Indeed, items from or used by heiress Paris and pop wreck Spears are amongst the most popular sellers online. Britney herself was voted eBay’s biggest celebrity draw of 2007, with an impressive 34,000 related items sold on the site last year, compared to the 27, 377 associated with Paris.

When Britney shaved off her hair last February, the sheared tresses turned up on eBay within days, attracting bids of up to e3,300, before being removed. Among the other Spears cast-offs snapped up by zealous fans were a Kleenex tissue found by a cleaner in the star’s hotel room, and a discarded piece of gum, which had the unique selling point of still having the fallen pop princess’ saliva on it. This went for e67.

However, despite Britney topping the eBay selling poll, it’s Paris’ old stuff that seems to generate the most web interest. In fact, two anonymous masked guys have set up a website, Hollywoodstartrash.com, with the sole purpose of rummaging through stars’ bins to find anything to sell via eBay to die hard fans — and Paris is their main attraction.

Just some of the amazing items once owned by the hotel heiress that have been sold online include the boarding pass from the flight Paris took to Hawaii upon her release from jail last summer (e103), as well as two letters she received whilst behind bars that fetched e347.

Other Paris “collectors’ items” sold last year include an empty can of dog food (€200), a used toothbrush (€210), an old pillow case (€65), and the aforementioned dental floss, which sold for an astounding €680.

But do celebrities themselves mind if their trash ends up for sale on the site? Marc Hartzman, who wrote the book Found on eBay, has argued that celebrities, if anything, should be grateful that the public is so eager to snap up some part of their lives.

“eBay is a pop culture barometer, really,” Hartzman has said. “You probably can measure a celebrity’s hotness just by the number of items of their’s for sale.”

Therefore, it’s safe to assume that Justin Timberlake won’t mind that his half-eaten French toast that he left behind at a New York radio station in 2000 sold for some e2,107 on eBay recently.

Closer to home, some of the more bizarre items (briefly) put up for sale on the Irish version of eBay were a jar of leprechaun tears and “Aran Island air”.

The late great Joe Dolan also sold a signed copy of his prosthetic hip bone through eBay for charity, while model Glenda Gilson’s bikini and a pair of Lidl pants once worn by radio host Ray D’arcy have also been traded on the site for People in Need.

But while hair and soiled personal items might seem the most extreme things that can appear on eBay, there have been moments in the history of celebrity selling that cross the line into outright creepiness.

For instance, a James Dean fan paid e289 last year for some glass — accompanied by a certificate of authenticity — taken from the crashed Porsche Spyder in which the actor died in 1955.

In another case, the suit worn by OJ Simpson on the day he was found not guilty in October 1995 was put up on the site with a minimum asking price of some e23,800.

The shirt collar had a blood stain from when OJ nicked himself while shaving that morning, and a make-up smudge left by his sister when she hugged him after the verdict. The suit was withdrawn after it only raised e1,600.

Like the site that removed the Diana hair, eBay also operate a ban on the sale of body parts, because, no doubt, there would be a demand for, say, discarded human tissue left over after a star’s umpteenth boob job or liposuction session.

Junk from their bins is one thing. Junk from their trunk is another matter entirely.

- Declan Cashin