Create an experience with Katy Regan

Hi. I am a proud northerner living down south; a novelist, columnist, ex 90s Soho hell-raiser / journalist and mum. (Truth be told I  have dined out on the fact I had a baby with my best friend seventeen years ago and we remain co-parents and best friends   since well, 2004.) 

Born and raised in working class Morecambe, Lancs, my first claim to fame was being expelled from primary school at the tender age of 10.

Didn't stop me in my relentless drive to become a success, however, and to spread my wings away from Morecambe. (Love going back there these days! My family run the most famous Stone Jetty cafe there to this day). 

After a random year at stage school where Posh Spice was my friend, I decided that wasn't the path for me and after A levels and University (Leeds, to study French&English), I moved to London in 1999 aged twenty-five.

There I had various hideous temping jobs, just trying to stay afloat before I landed my first job on glossy magazine Cosmo. This included a fleeting stint as a 'dancer' at the infamous Windmill gentleman's club - I lasted two nights! (still made more than I did in a month though.)

Doesn't seem to have done me too much harm since I am now the author of six published novels here, and in the States and have worked as a writer on probably every glossy magazine there ever was as the rent-an-office-up-for-anything-reporter!

I was that journalist that did THOSE gigs nobody else in the office really dared and have consequently seen some things...Among my exploits are : 

 - going to do a story on a sex school for the wives of oligarchs in Moscow (whilst I was 6 months pregnant) 

 - so many dating stories I've lost count 

 - doing an investigative report on the swingers and swinging clubs of  Great Britain. (They're mostly in Sheffield to be fair!.) 

 - Being naked at a nudist town for a week  - and writing about it 

 - being a footballer's wife for a week

But also plenty of harrowing stories too, from interviewing bomb survivors to  HIV sufferers; I have a special project in the Imperial War Museum Permanent Collection about families who lost soldiers in the Afghanistan conflict.

I am now a novelist and the sex / dating  / relationships correspondent for Yahoo - so things have gone full circle since my Marie-Claire days. Except these days, I don't have sex, relationships or go on any dates - I just write about them!

I live in Hertfordshire with my 17 yo son, whom I've co-parented since birth (did I mention that?). He's about to go to university next year and I'm not sure how I'll cope to be honest! I'll keep writing and talking I think.