She is the woman who launched the hit TV shows Loose Women, Good Morning Britain, Come Dine With Me, and Judge Rinder.
But Helen Warner, former head of daytime at ITV and Channel 4, made a monumental career change in 2017 when she decided to focus on full time authorship.
Today, with her first psychological thriller, She, just out, Helen reveals it could soon be optioned for film in a move that would see her relocate to Hollywood.
Helen tells P.S.: “The book has gone down well in America and we are waiting to hear about options for film. I would hope to be living in Hollywood in the next year.”
The novel centres on Ben and his sexy, impulsive and intelligent girlfriend Bella. She is all he ever wanted, and Bella wants him, too – but all to herself. Soon it becomes harder for Ben’s family and friends to stay in touch with him and when tragedy strikes, the real nightmare begins.
Mum-of-two Helen admits the book is an unintentional departure from her usual genre, commercial women’s fiction.
“I have friends who have only sons and there were some horror stories about daughters-in-law from hell,” she explains. “That gave me the idea for the book. As I was writing it, it became quite dark. It was obviously where I was meant to go, but it wasn’t intentional.”
The writer – who with her film editor husband Rob Warner has a daughter, 19-year-old Oxford University student Alice and a son, Paddy, 16, who is still at school –wrote her first novel, RSVP, in 2011 on the train to work.
It was an instant best seller. Others followed – Stay Close To Me, The Story Of Our Lives, The One That Got Away and With Or Without You.
She reveals: “When I was at Channel Four I had a long commute, I was reading a lot of books, and I thought that with some of them I could do better. So I bought a laptop and started writing on the train one day.
“Some of the stories I came across in my TV career, on shows like Loose Women, gave me plenty of inspiration.
“I loved Loose Women. It was for women, made by women and it was the first time we saw women on telly being funny, doing their own thing and being successful. It felt like a watershed moment.
“I was heavily pregnant with Alice at the time. They had to make me a special headset because of my enormous bump – I couldn’t reach the microphone to talk to the women. The programme holds special memories for me. It was such an amazing time.
“I am still really good friends with Jane Moore, Nadia Swalhala, Kaye Adams, who were all the original Loose Women. Alice is a fan now.”
Both the writer and her daughter chose to study north of the border, until fate played its hand.
She reveals: “Alice wanted to go to university in Edinburgh but was then offered a place at Oxford, she couldn’t turn it down.”
And laughing she adds: “I went to Glasgow University – for a week! I lived in Harwich in Essex. I hadn’t thought the distance through properly. It was so far away. I had a boyfriend who is now my husband so I didn’t really want to leave.”
HC Warner She, HQ, £7.99
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