It's A Wiggly, Wiggly Living!

The Wiggles have topped the list of Australia's richest entertainers for the third year in a row, beating out Nichole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Keith Urban and Russell Crowe.

IT HAS been a bumpy road for the Wiggles, but the group famous for making a motza from fruit salad and hot potatoes has retained the title of Australia's richest entertainers, topping BRW's annual Top 50 Entertainers List for the third year running.

Late last year, the group hired Sam Moran as the new Yellow Wiggle, replacing founding member Greg Page because of his illness, but sold-out tours in the US, along with album and merchandise sales helped the group match their 2005 earnings of $50 million.

Box-office takings and concert-ticket sales around the world helped boost the total income for Australia's actors, musicians and entertainers by 15.1 per cent to $393.1 million.

Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that they were able to carry on as well as they did. Greg being replaced by Sam was the biggest and potentially most disruptive switcharoo in children's entertainment since Joe took over for Steve on "Blue's Clues".

Of course, I'm looking at this from the sidelines now, as the Llama-ettes have grown right out of all of that. Indeed, one of the sure-fire ways for me to get the five year old riled up is to burst into my rendition of "Silly Hat" from the Blue's Clues album. (Here's a sample of the original and here are the lyrics, in case you're interested. In my own defense, it's got a great latin beat to it.)