Rise of £5m Coleen

They have become a slightly more downmarket version of Posh and Becks - and now Wayne Rooney and Coleen McLoughlin are catching them up in the wealth stakes.

Indeed, at the age of 19 Miss McLoughlin has just secured her third million-pound-plus contract in a few weeks.

She has signed a £1.5million agreement with Nike, to go alongside the £1.5million she will get to promote Asda and her own £2million book deal. That takes her earnings since February to an astonishing £5million.

Which should at least put an end to those jokes that with her love of expensive shopping trips and holidays, she spends her fiance's money faster than he earns it.

Last year Miss McLoughlin spent £16,000 on handbags, £6,000 at the hairdressers and an estimated £50,000 on holidays.

She wears a £25,000 Tiffany ring, owns a £35,000 Rolex watch and is never so happy as when rooting through the designer boutiques in her home city of Liverpool.

Miss McLoughlin's latest contract, with Nike Women Sportswear, will see her promote her own line of sportswear called Nike C. She will model a range of tracksuits and leotards all carrying the C, for Coleen, logo.

Rooney already has his own £3million-a-year deal with Nike, thanks to his exploits playing for England and Manchester United.

Miss McLoughlin's sporting pedigree, however, is more questionable. Formally a generous size 12 - and a self-confessed McDonald's devotee - she has embarked on a strict diet and fitness regime.

She lost a stone through regular gym visits and cutting back on fried foods, and released her first fitness DVD on Boxing Day. She showed off her new physique in a black bikini in Dubai yesterday, where she is staying at a five-star resort.

Before heading off on holiday she had signed a £1.5million two-anda-half year deal with Asda to front advertising campaigns alongside Rooney, who will earn the same amount. Miss McLoughlin will design her own clothing and cosmetic range for the supermarket.

She has also agreed a reported £2million deal with HarperCollins - which will publish Rooney's autobiography - to write her own fashion and lifestyle tome.

Not bad for a girl who grew up in a three-bedroomed terrace house on a council estate in Croxteth, Liverpool.

Before leaving school at 16, she worked as a shop girl in high street store New Look, earning £3.65 an hour.

Despite her new-found wealth and Rooney's £55,000-a-week salary and sponsorship deals, the couple still have some way to go before they overtake the earnings of the Beckhams.

They have an estimated £ 100million fortune, thanks to his £120,000-a-week wages at Real Madrid and her £25million income from her time as a Spice Girl.