Take a Chance on Me (32 page)

A
s always
, there are a few people who inspired and helped me write this book and I am grateful to them all, especially my totally fabulous and patient editor Lydia Vassar-Smith, fairy godmother Kim Nash and all the fantastic team at Bookouture.

Although Charlie Blundell is a fictitious character, she was created not only from my own past experience in radio broadcasting but also from a wonderful author and part-time volunteer radio presenter on Brighton Coastway Hospital,
Charlie Plunkett
. There, the resemblance ends.
Charlie Plunkett
presents a Saturday evening chatshow during which she plays lots of feel-good music and talks about the joyful moments in life including her favourite topics: weddings and babies.

Mercedes Thomson is an incredible character but is certainly not unique. I had the good fortune to meet, in a virtual sense, Priscilla Hartman Hedlin from Austin, Texas. She is an astonishing woman who writes a blog called
‘
The Wheelchair Mommy
'
and is an inspiration to all. I learned a great deal about being a paraplegic from her and modelled Mercedes' positive attitude on her own. You can learn more about her by visiting her site. Of course, she is not alone and there are a huge number of men and women who live life to the maximum and have fulfilled dreams and goals that the rest of us can only dream of.

Last but by no means least, I am indebted to Katie Phillips for allowing me to model Bert on her wonderful parrot called, not surprisingly, Bert. Katie's Bert frequently appears on her Facebook page and gets up to all sorts of mischief including phoning people at random and taking selfies. She kindly sent me photographs and videos of him along with regular updates of what he got up to. He does indeed own a small shopping trolley and can hurl plastic balls with accuracy and says ‘mmm mmm'. He's a bright little soul who captured my heart with his antics. To my knowledge, he has not sung ‘Like A Virgin' but there are many examples on YouTube of parrots who can perform incredible tricks and can sing far better than me.