Former pin-up girl Aota Noriko (39) is one of the celebrities labeled “make-inu” in Japanese showbiz, a phrase that literally means “loser dog” and is given to female celebs thought incapable of getting married. But following the revelation yesterday that she’s been married and divorced, her reputation is probably worse than ever. It turns out she married a 38-year-old restaurant owner in 2004 at a time when her career was going nowhere. She told no one but family and close friends, not even her fellow former members of the popular 90s “sexy group” C.C. Girls. But her career took a strange twist shortly after her marriage. She was one of several women, including actress Sugita Kaori (42), former porn star Iijima Ai (34) and model Rinka (33), who were panelists on the new hit TV Asahi variety show “London Hearts”. Hosted by comedy duo London Boots, the key to the show’s success was its focus on the loser status of these and other female celebrities, most of them on the wrong side of 30. They ranked each other on things like who the public would say would make the worst girlfriend, marriage or sex partner. The success of the show and her new image as “Bubble Aota”, someone psychologically stuck in the bubble economy years of the early 1990s, led to more TV appearances. As her public persona became more and more divorced from her private reality, her husband filed for an actual divorce in 2005. But they remain close and have talked about possibly getting remarried once their lifestyles have settled down.