Russell Brand is a man with a steely disregard for understatement. The British comic, presenting the MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday night, was keen to hammer home the significance of an appearance by Britney Spears.

"Consider this the resurrection of Britney!" Brand boomed, and in case his audience of millions failed to grasp the significance of the singer's rehabilitation, he likened her to a "female Christ".

Hyperbole or not, the assured, confident and sexy Spears that showed up this year was in marked contrast to the troubled figure who featured in last year's ceremony -- one of the biggest nights in the global music business. Striding on stage in a vintage silver Versace mini-dress, her skin glowing and her eyes bright, Britney, the consummate professional, was back.

Last year, the fallen pop princess was universally derided for a disastrous performance of her latest single, Gimme More, during which she looked bloated and unfocused, while lip-synching out of time and swaying distantly to the music.

At the time it was, for Spears, just the latest in a long line of PR disasters that had reached its apex when paparazzi tailed her to a hair salon and snapped through the window as she shaved her own head.

During that year the singer, who came to fame with the global hit Baby One More Time, had become a paparazzi dream, as her life descended into a nightmare. There were alleged suicide attempts and outbursts of violence, as well as whisperings of bipolar disorder, drug dependency and late-night drinking sessions.

There were suggestions -- backed up by the courts and her ex-husband Kevin Federline -- of her being an unfit mother to sons Sean Preston and Jayden James.

Ever since she broke into the big time aged 16 -- a jailbait provocateur in a skimpy schoolgirl's uniform -- many have predicted the self-destruction of the fame-hungry, but undoubtedly talented, kid from Mississippi.

And it came to pass -- or so it seemed. After 83 million record sales, two marriages, one divorce, one annullment, two children, a lost custody battle, repeated psychiatric evaluations, tens of thousands of paparazzi, a nude magazine cover and the most globalised of breakdowns, the singer seemed finished, professionally -- on the scrapheap at 26.

But Spears is clearly made of sterner stuff than many gave her credit for. Her appearance on Sunday -- to collect three statuettes for Piece of Me, a dance song about the incessant media scrutiny of her life, which won the Best Video, Best Pop Video and Best Female Video gongs -- suggested that it would be unwise to write off her career just yet.

By simply turning up, smiling sweetly, and not making a fool of herself, Spears earned a standing ovation. Unlike more recent public appearances, she appeared to be sober, and in rude physical health -- a fact that was noticed with some relish by Brand.

It all appeared to be so different at the beginning of the year. When her husband won custody of their children, Spears reportedly did not sleep for four days and ended up being sectioned at the Los Angeles Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre. She was reported to be suffering from bipolar disorder.

The rise of Spears from small-town girl to global icon demonstrated the endless possibilities of the American Dream. Her fall from grace exposed its dark side.

Spears is perhaps the most photographed person on the planet and it is conservatively estimated that the LA paparazzi trade makes $150m off her back every year. At one point last year, more than 100 paps were on Britney duty alone.

The singer has a bizarre relationship with the photographers who stalk her at every opportunity. Although she has claimed to be scared of the attention, Spears has gone out of her way to court it, not least affording them the opportunity to chronicle her erratic behaviour, including knickerless upskirt flashes and a very public display of hair shaving.

Furthermore, in a celebrity version of Stockholm syndrome, she even dated Adnan Ghalib, a British paparazzo who had courted her via text message.

Spears' propensity for unworkable relationships has seemingly known no bounds. In January 2004, she married childhood friend Jason Alexander in Los Angeles. The marriage was annulled 55 hours later.

In September of the same year, she married Kevin Federline, a dancer she had met just months previously. She had two sons with Federline, but the union was beset with difficulties and numerous bouts in rehab.

In March 2007, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr wrote that in the aftermath of Spears's personal struggles, Spears had been reduced to an abstract idea.

"The abstraction is not surprising," he wrote. "Whatever media touch, they objectify. What must it be like to have your marriage and divorce, your relationship with your parents and kids dissected by millions of strangers who think they know you?"

There is evidence that she is learning from past mistakes and, of late, she has surrounded herself with people who clearly have her best interests at heart.

Her recovery was masterminded by her father, James, and her lawyer, Andrew Wallet, under whose legal control she was placed in February, giving the men stewardship of her assets.

While her mother, Lynn, who is shortly to publish a tell-all book detailing her daughter's teen drinking and drug-taking habits, has been less publicly supportive, her father appears to have been a stabilising influence. A recovering alcoholic who turned his life around, divorced from Britney's mother six years ago and set up his own catering business in Louisiana, he gave up his job and moved into his daughter's house in LA in February to help her rebuild her life.

Spears Sr quickly got rid of what he saw as the most negative influences in her life -- including her supposed manager, a man named Sam Lutfi, who had inveigled his way into the Spears camp and was described by some parts of the press as her enabler.

With complete financial control of her affairs, Spears Sr put a stop to her erratic spending, and hired several burly bodyguards to keep away the paparazzi and, one suspects, keep her from making contact with them.

But there was also a marked change in the way the press has covered her life since the events of last January that suggested the media, shocked by images of a clearly disturbed Spears being carted into an ambulance during a breakdown just after New Year, realised that they, too, may be partly to blame.

Perez Hilton, the notoriously acidic gossip blogger, and previously one of Spears's harshest critics, has hardly written about her for months. In March, Rolling Stone magazine published an epic story about the star, entitled The Tragedy of Britney Spears, suggesting readers' insatiable appetite for yet more stories was partly to blame for her demise.

Suddenly, good news stories began to filter out. Britney was back in the studio recording again. She was making a guest appearance on the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, teaching dance classes to kids in downtown Los Angeles, getting in shape. She had rehired her old manager Larry Rudolph (whom she had fired last year) and was seeing her sons again.

This last development may have been, for Spears personally, the most important. In July, a court gave her former husband, Federline, sole custody of the boys, while allowing her visitation rights. It's an arrangement that appears to suit her, and helped her finally acknowledge her father's role in turning her life around.

"My father saved my life," she said just last week. "I probably wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him. I've not always been a good daughter; but he basically gave up his job and his life to look after me at a time when I wasn't even sure I wanted to go on living. I owe him my life."

- John Meagher