BRITNEY & JAMIE LYNN: SISTERS AT WAR

The singer is spitting mad over the ‘crazy lies’ in her sibling’s new book

- LESEGO MKHIZE

THEY once seemed so close; two talented golden-haired girls with the world at their feet.

Pictures abounded of them hugging on red carpets, hamming it up as kids and shining brightly in an industry that adored them.

But not all that glitters is gold – and a new book by Jamie Lynn Spears has enraged her big sister, Britney, who has fought a long, bruising battle for her independence and has been trying to piece her life back together.

Jamie Lynn’s book, Things I Should Have Said, puts Britney front and centre of a family steeped in dysfunction. The 30-year-old has been on a PR blitz for her book, exposing intimate details about Brit’s life – and the 40-year-old pop star is having none of it.

JAMIE LYNN: ‘I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS HAPPENING’

At 16, Jamie Lynn was the star of Nickelodeon’s teen series Zoey 101 when she became pregnant with her daughter, Maddie (now 13).

Her management team scrambled to hide her pregnancy – including from Britney – to safeguard her wholesome TV image.

At the same time, Brit’s behaviour was becoming “erratic, paranoid and spiralling”, Jamie Lynn writes, and her big sister was placed under a 13-year conservatorship.

“I didn’t understand what was happening nor was I focused on that because I [had turned] 17 and was about to have a baby,” Jamie Lynn says. “I understand just as little about [the conservatorship] then as I do now.

“Maybe I should have done more but again, I was a child. Britney was the adult, and she had promised me she was fine. By accepting her declaration I enabled many of the behaviours that contributed to her downward spiral.”