Desperately seeking for love....

NEW YORK (AP) - Madonna has jousted with an army of men during her rise to fame, treating the majority like "arm-candy", a controversial new biography will claim.

Andrew Morton's forthcoming book 'Madonna', which is out next week, has been universally slammed by the Queen of Pop and her entourage, who claim it is a "lovely work of fiction."

Morton, who penned an even more notorious book about Princess Diana, claims to have spoken to more than 70 of Madonna's friends and associates in putting the biography together.

They include a number of former lovers, with Morton writing she has sought to be emotionally and physically involved with the likes of John F. Kennedy Jr, Michael Jackson, Warren Beatty and Vanilla Ice.

Morton claimed in a recent interview: "Many of the men in her life have been arm-candy. She flirted with Michael Jackson and had a relationship with Warren Beatty but many of the others like Carlos Leon (father of Lourdes) and Jim Albright (former bodyguard) were not well known.

"She spent a long time looking for love in all the wrong places. In the end, she is an old-fashioned Catholic girl, who wants to be married," Morton told People magazine.

Rapper Ice, whose star has fallen somewhat in recent years, says Madonna was a pleasure to be with: "She's not about whips and chains. She was very romantic."

However, former spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg has dismissed the book. She insists: "There isn't one thing in it that is true. It is a lovely work of fiction, I am sure."

Morton reports Madonna and the late John F. Kennedy Jr were actually lovers for a while in 1987, while she was still married to actor Sean Penn, "but he was just too nervous for them to click sexually".

Elsewhere, a bid to secure a sexual liaison with Michael Jackson was aborted because "he was giggling so much". Morton also claims Madonna had two sexual relationships with women, first with comedian Sandra Bernhard and then Ingrid Casares, daughter of a millionaire Cuban business man.

Andrew Morton is believed to have met Madonna once, at a party in 1999, and has not spoken to the Queen of Pop about the unauthorised biography.