Letting Go of the Glitz: The True Story of One Woman's Struggle to Live the Simple Life in Chelsea

"Help! I'm Married Alive!"

Julia Stephenson, struggling to cope with life as a Surrey housewife, grimly welded to her electric floor polisher and fed up with her golf-addicted, BMW-driving husband, bolts to the fleshpots of London.

Here she forges a new life as a single girl about town in her Chelsea eyrie, a short walk from Peter Jones. Bemused to find herself an 'It-girl', life soon becomes a ritzy blur of parties, popping corks and flashbulbs, while handsome aristocratic boyfriends come and go.

Realising she isn't cut out for this she reinvents herself as a femme serieuse, representing the Green Party at the general election and begins to convert her flat into the first carbon-neutral dwelling in Sloane Square. Giving up her usual dating fodder of Old Etonians and bankers she embarks on a tempestuous love affair with her builder.

Who wants to be driven around in a Porsche when you can be ferried about in a spacious white van that runs on waste cooking oil?

Life is so much better in every way when you let go of the glitz.