Tara Palmer-Tomkinson - ex 'It girl' and friend of the Windsors who once apparently said she didn't worry too much about money as 'my grandfather left us a lot of Leicestershire', has taken a long hard look at herself.

Her cocaine-fuelled Dionysian days, the 38-year-old said this week, are well and truly behind her. And so, though she'd already proven that she knew the meaning of hard work - "I'd done I'm a Celebrity (and) won Comic Relief does Fame Academy" - she recently resolved to push herself and show her real mettle.

"So I sat down in my flat in Kensington and wrote a novel."

Publishing a novel is notoriously difficult. There are thousands of aspiring scribes out there who've been researching their subject and honing their skills for years, and found no joy with a publisher.

But Ms T must be unusually gifted; despite her admission that she 'hasn't read many books' herself (though she does like Jilly Cooper), her family saga Inheritance was picked up immediately.

Her heroine, she admits, is partly based on her. But like all good writers, Tara understands the liberating power of imagination: "The first thing I did was give her bigger boobs."

One reviewer has compared Inheritance to Evelyn Waugh and although released passages with grammatical errors and characters who fret about being 'off their faces' didn't remind me of the great satirist, I do wish Tara well. She does make me smile.