Melanie finds novel way to prove she has the write stuff
ACELEBRITY agent turned author has become a Sunday Times bestseller with her second novel ‘Ruthless Women’.
Melanie Blake, who grew up in Heaton Chapel, made her name as a celebrity agent to soap stars and pop stars alike before turning her attention to her true passion of writing.
Growing up, Melanie says she came from a working class background - but always harboured dreams of becoming an author, despite being told by a teacher that ‘the only thing you’ll be writing are labels on factory boxes’.
Now, Melanie has become a bestselling writer as well as adapting her first novel ‘The Thunder Girls’ into a successful stage play.
“I’m from a very poor family,” said Melanie, 44, who now lives in London.
“I had about five different jobs when I was 13. I worked at Stockport market on the toy stall, at Reddish
mills, a video shop on Stockport road, a cafe in the town centre and a garage in Heaton Chapel I was literally working every night because we were so poor.
“We lived on benefits and food banks, we were really, properly destitute on the breadline. I knew I didn’t want to live like that and the only way out for me was to just knuckle down.”
She added that her house in Heaton Chapel had no carpet or even any door handles and said this made her ‘clamour for glamour’.
Melanie’s mum Mary, who died in 2009, used to work as a cleaner and Melanie says watching her mum work also made her dream of a life outside of Heaton Chapel.
However, attending St Anne’s RC High School, Melanie says she was told that ‘the only thing you’ll be writing are labels on factory boxes’.
“I was dyslexic, they put me in all the bottom sets,” she said.
“They said you can’t write and anything you write no-one will ever want to read and the only thing anyone will ever want to read is a label you write in a factory.
“You just want someone to be kind to you, they didn’t teach me anything – I have a lot of anger towards that school.”
Melanie also says she is one of a number of ex-St Anne’s pupils who have found fame, including actress Sally Lindsay, band Blossoms and Lord of the Rings star Dominic Monaghan.
After leaving school at 16, with no qualifications, Melanie later moved to London where she got her big break working on Top of the Pops.
She started by offering advice to Kylie Minogue and Westlife at Top of the Pops as a camera assistant, such as by telling the Irish band that their wind machines weren’t particularly ‘flattering’.
She then Melanie worked her way up from an extra on EastEnders to become one of the biggest soap agents in the country.
Due to the racy nature of her new book ‘Ruthless Women’, Melanie has been called the ‘Queen of the bonkbuster’ and the new Jackie Collins – an author she first came across in her hometown.
“I got my first ever Jackie Collins’ book that I read from Reddish library,” said Melanie.
“I was nine, far too young, but if I had never read them I would never have had the idea of the dream to be able to live the life that I lived.”
Melanie wrote the book, which follows the behind the scenes drama of a fictional soap called ‘Falcon Bay’, in seven weeks during the first lockdown.
She said: “I have to work really hard to write and yet I’ve written two books and a play.
“When you come from my background I am always going to be working class, that’s never going to change no matter how much success I have because I don’t buy into it.
“All I care about is the reader, if I can give the reader a brilliant time that means more to me than anything.
“There are so many people that want to stop women that are from the working class – so I think a victory for me is a victory for any woman who’s been told no.”
Her first novel, written when she was 20 but released 20 years later, ‘The Thunder Girls’, about a successful 80s girl band’s reunion – 30 years after they were savagely dropped from their label, was turned into a successful stage play.
Melanie returned to Stockport when the play was staged at the Lowry in 2019.
She said: “I’ll never forget walking around Stockport and just taking it in and thinking, ‘God I’m back’ – with my own play and best-selling book.
“I’m proud of Stockport otherwise I wouldn’t come back.
“I stayed in the hotel opposite the train station and I felt at home, as if I’d never left.
“I’m a Stockport girl made good – whenever I see the viaduct I know that I’m home.”
Melanie also has a message for any children who are in a similar situation to what she had to go through when she was at St Anne’s.
“I didn’t fulfil my dream until I was 40,” she said.
“If I can do it, you can do it. It’s never too late to do whatever you want to do.”