Wendy’s comic eye for lifestyles of the rich and the infamous

The Yorkshire lass, whose debut novel Simply Divine was inspired by her partnership with the celebrity socialite, went on to write a string of comical chick-lit novels including Azur Like It, Fame Fatale and Filthy Rich.

“I’ve always been interested in social climbing as a comic subject,” says the writer once dubbed a “modern day Jilly Cooper”. When she was writing Palmer-Tomkinson’s column, the celebrity would tell Wendy amusing snippets, like “Champagne makes your breath smell”, and “Never eat canapes because if they’re dropped on the floor in the kitchen, they’ll always be put back on the tray”.

The column, she says, formed the foundation of her career, which is something she’s eternally grateful for. Holden’s experience working at magazines including Tatler, Harpers & Queen and The Sunday Times’ Style section has also given her a lot of material for her fictional tales.

“I’ve had the greatest fortune to work in glossy magazines and newspapers, and have had the inside track on upper-class and glamorous lives through my job,” she says. “We all seem to want to be posh now. That’s something that’s changed in the last 20 years.”

Social climbing forms the basis of her latest novel Marrying Up, which sees a humbly-born, scheming social climber, Alexa, fighting to reach the top of the gold-digging tree, with her sights on a title, mansion and a very rich prince. However, there’s a Cinderella-type fly in the ointment.

Wendy, 46, admits there was a time in her teens when she could also see the merits of improving her social status.

“I was desperate to marry a public schoolboy, get a tiara and live in an ancestral home. I was 18 and couldn’t wait to get my hands on somebody with a hand-tied bow tie.

“But then I realised there’s slightly more to life than that.”

But it hasn’t stopped her fascination with the subject.

“There was a time when every sitcom on the telly featured it. I’m sure people have social climbed from the Stone Age. I’m sure there were people who had a slightly posher cave in Neolithic times and a better cut of animal skin.”

Wendy herself has remained a keen observer, rather than participant, of the upper-class world, she stresses.

“I was brought up in Yorkshire by a very ordinary family who laughed at anything like that.

“I’ve carried that with me and it’s been a great advantage because I was able to be part of that world, and yet be able to see the funny side of it at the same time. I did feel like an outsider, but not in a bad way. I knew I was different but I also knew most of these people weren’t as posh as they were making out to be.”

She believes there’s more social climbing now than there was in the Eighties, which seemed a more politically-correct decade.

“The emphasis on feminism, women working and women being educated was much more prevalent than it is now, when there seems to be more women who aren’t working, or who think that marrying someone rich or becoming famous is the way forward.”

Wendy’s Yorkshire working-class roots have kept her feet firmly on the ground.

Growing up near Haworth, home of the Brontës, her father was a printer and her mother a secretary who loved her job. She showed the young Wendy how much fun you can have in the world of work.

“I was working-class and probably still am. I have a working-class reaction to things. If I see an outrageous piece of snobbery I can’t help but laugh.”