Melanie Blake

It has been hailed as the heir to the bonkbusters of queen of the genre, Jackie Collins. And with its high-octane (and plentiful) sex scenes, wickedly drawn characters, and a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter, it is little wonder the novel Ruthless Women has rocketed up the bestseller charts.

Set in the back-stabbing, high-stakes, low-morals (read no-morals) world of a television soap Falcon Bay located in picturesque Jersey, it holds a mirror up to the nastier side of show business. And its author, Melanie Blake, certainly knows a thing or two about that particular world.

She was a highly successful agent, known as the “Queen of Soaps” working with the likes of Patsy Kensit, Beverley Callard, Michelle Collins and Claire King. (Melanie was even in her youth an extra on Coronation Street and EastEnders). So it is perhaps no surprise that once she started writing, the book poured from her.

Melanie Blake with Corrie’s Beverley Callard

“I wrote seven days a week for seven weeks during the first lockdown in March 2020 and the book was written,” she says. “It was like a purge. I think I might have had PTSD,” she says. “I didn’t know I was burdened until I wrote it. I dealt with some monsters during my time, and some absolutely wonderful women too. But the point is, one comes with the other.”

So how did she survive all those years in the industry? “By staying in the hurricane.”

It was when the tour of the stage adaptation of her previous book, The Thunder Girls, was cancelled because of the pandemic, that she decided to get writing again. “If the tour hadn’t been cancelled then Ruthless Women would not have been written,” she says. “It has changed my life.”

With the success of Ruthless Women – it has been a Sunday Times bestseller and a hit worldwide – Melanie, who lives in Crouch End and lived in Camden for many years, wound up her agency.

The story of her rise to becoming a successful manager and agent and now author would not look out of place on the big screen.
Born in Stockport, the first few years of Melanie’s life were fairly uneventful: living in a semi-detached house and while not wealthy they were not left wanting. But then her father became involved with a religious cult giving away most of any money they had, leaving the family in penury.

“My childhood was awful,” she says. “We were dirt poor. There was violence. The only thing that kept me going was watching glamorous soap operas on the sly and reading books about women who were empowered and sexually adventurous.”

Jackie Collins was a favourite. “If there wasn’t documented proof of my history, no one would believe it. It’s like the stuff of Hollywood stories.”

Melanie escaped her home, the cult, and was at one time homeless. She decamped to London and after a series of dead-end jobs, including giving out free drinks samples at Euston station, her luck changed. She was offered the job of a camera assistant on Top of Pops. She was 19.

That she had no idea what a camera assistant did was not going to stop her. Four years later she went out on her own managing music artists. She then moved on to become an agent for soap stars.

“How did I do it? I started in such a low place it was either death or success,” she says. “I built up a multimillion-pound empire and now this book has made me famous and after 24 years I decided to wind up the agency.”

So with that chapter closed, what’s next?

A Ruthless Women television adaptation is in the offing and another book, Ruthless Men, will revisit Falcon Bay and its addictive characters.

Says Melanie: “I rock up with my Jackie Collins jewellery, my one-liners, and my saucy books, and everybody wants to know. People want escapism, especially at the moment. They say write about what you know, and I know about bitching, bonking, and backstabbing.”

To be continued… as the soaps would say.

• Ruthless Women. By Melanie Blake, Head of Zeus, £12.99