I’ve always loved stories. I spent most of my childhood exploring life in other worlds – hoovering up everything from Mallory Towers to Jane Eyre. I also loved to write – especially when Debbie magazine rewarded one of my poems with a Jimmy Osmond sew-on-patch.

By the time I’d graduated to Cosmopolitan I’d been seduced by a modern kind of storytelling – advertising. Living in the glamorous world of ‘Fry’s Turkish Delight… full of Eastern promise’ had to beat lying on my Laura Ashley eiderdown reading about it.

Imagine the thrill of working in the same building as the men who created ‘only the crumbliest flakiest chocolate,’ even if the ad I was working on was for McDonald’s Neasden drive-thru.

Since then I’ve had the fortune to help create some great brand stories - Johnnie Walker, Dettol and Cillit Bang (!) amongst them and, when I’ve needed to recharge my batteries, my own stories have carried me through.

Yoga School Dropout concerned my quest to discover life's deeper meaning in the yoga schools of India. The second one's heart was the Norfolk yoga scene, and the latest is fiction – about the choices we make between heart and head, between corporate and personal life, and between buff bodies and cake.

So here’s to story-telling; mine, yours, and ours.