Gatsbys Arriving like Buses

Damn! Having used my Gatsby analogy for Peter James’s Brighton Pier party I now can’t think of another one for the party John Blake threw on Saturday to celebrate twenty years in the publishing business. Is it really only twenty years? What a torrent of water has been under the bridge in those two short decades.

So, how to describe a champagne party held on the riverside lawns of the Blake Mansion which included a Rolling Stones tribute band, a barbecue for hundreds and fireworks at midnight. The crowd was a glorious mix of the villainous, the glamorous and the downright mysterious with the great circus master himself at the centre.

You see what I mean about the ‘Gatsby thing’- Mr. Fitzgerald knew a thing or two when he created that character.

How the Fabulous Dreams of Melissa Bell Came True

Tomorrow sees the publication of Heart and Soul, a book I have helped Melissa Bell to write.

Melissa is a singer, a kidney dialysis patient and campaigner, and the mother of X-Factor winner Alexandra Burke.

The story takes flight when, as a shy, plump ten year-old, Melissa sees Lena Zavaroni winning Opportunity Knocks and dreams of one day doing the same herself.

Many years later she gets to see her daughter become an overnight star and fulfil all the dreams she herself was chasing so passionately, but by that time she is confined to a kidney dialysis machine for a large part of her life.

It is a story that anyone who has dreamed of being a star, or who has harboured wild ambitions for their children, will understand.

Heart and Soul is being published by John Blake.