Rob Lowe and his wife Sheryl have been having bad luck with childcare recently. The actor, who played the gorgeous Sam Seaborn in The West Wing , has just filed lawsuits against two ex-nannies accusing them respectively of spreading "malicious lies" and of blackmail.

In a bizarre blog last week on the website The Huffington Post, Lowe claimed that one of the nannies had demanded $1.5m - or else she would publicise "a vicious laundry list of false terribles".