Annie Ashworth and Meg Sanders met at ante–natal classes and bonded as they learnt the benefits of raspberry leaf tea and relaxation breathing. Neither remedy worked but a friendship was born.

Annies background is in advertising copywriting and journalism. She cut her teeth on a great little magazine called Southside, and put in the journo donkey work at Essentials, editing knitting patterns, and the late lamented Womans Journal. Since going freelance in 1990, she has written for several publications including the Evening Standard and Homes and Gardens, as well as editing Inspector Morse for serial in the Sunday People, without giving away whodunnit. She has three boys and has built her own house on a hill in Warwickshire. She is director of the Stratford-upon-Avon Literary Festival.

Meg comes from a book publishing background, though she started out by translating thirteen volumes of robot technology from French to English. Things got more interesting when she edited and wrote a series of activity books telling children how to cover the kitchen table in glitter and PVA glue. This was obviously before she had children of her own. After a diploma in horticulture, she edited and wrote gardening books but still cant work how to prune apple trees. She is married, has twins – a boy and a girl – and lives near Stratford upon Avon.

They started out together with a mission to save the planet from grammatical horrors and badly placed apostrophes by offering their services as website content writers. Luckily they were rescued from catatonia (after a very dull foray with a government quango report) by the commission to write a book. Trade Secrets resulted, a spin off from the cult BBC2 series of the same name, and was followed by Trade Secrets Christmas, How to Beat the System, Trade Secrets Parenting, Fat Club, Celebrity Fit Club, The Property Chain, but they definitely didnt write a Channel 4 book called Am I Good In Bed? (A title that doesnt bear