Christine Aziz beat 46,000 other authors to win the coveted Richard and Judy publishing competition. But, as she tells Lindsay Jennings, she's a somewhat reluctant celebrity.

CHRISTINE Aziz was sitting in the Richard and Judy studios, lights ablaze, when the winner of their How to Get Published Competition was announced.

Her "It's You" moment came in front of an audience of a couple of million, her book The Olive Readers having being plucked from 46,000 submitted first chapters and synopses.

"It was such a surprise because I didn't think I was going to win it," she says. "I wasn't even sure I wanted to win it to be honest. I had a real sense there was going to be huge expectation because obviously if you're one in 46,000 people you're expected to be hugely special and I'm not such a confident person. Also there would be a lot of attention on you, whereas the idea was always to be published, but remain anonymous."

Christine may not be super confident, few writers are, but no-one can deny that winning the Richard and Judy competition must put incredible pressure on the winner to succeed. The high-profile competition landed Christine with a £50,000 publishing contract with Pan Macmillan and the standard was so high that the four runners-up were given £20,000 publishing contracts too.

Although she was described as a 52-year-old grandmother and homeopath, giving people the impression that she made jam and cakes in her spare time, Christine is actually a seasoned freelance journalist.

Her father was a sergeant major, stationed at Catterick during her early years, and the family lived in Richmond, North Yorkshire, until she reached school age. But her nomadic lifestyle gave her plenty of opportunity to lose herself in writing.

"We were like military gypsies. The minute you tried to make friends with somebody you always had to say goodbye and you were always the outsider," she says. "I was always making up stories and imagining things. I had a very lonely childhood and it was really a way of creating my own world."

Most of Christine's education was in London and she left school with one O level, taking a variety of jobs - au pair in Switzerland, cleaner, factory packer, dental receptionist and cub reporter on a weekly paper.

She went on to be a freelance journalist working for national newspapers and magazines such as Marie Claire, work which has taken her all over the world - Iraq, West Africa, Zimbabwe - the latter work coming when her children were teenagers.

It's no wonder being described as a 52-year-old grandmother in the publicity blurb irked her a bit.

"The fact that my journalistic experience was played down was probably to give the impression that I was this little old lady in an attic or something when in fact I've been on the front line and I've been shot at," she says. "If I'd been a man who was an experienced journalist and a homeopath, they wouldn't be calling him a 52-year-old grandfather."

Being a journalist, she's also used to asking the questions, being the outsider, and not the one suddenly bathed in the glow of a huge spotlight.

"I wouldn't say I'm a shrinking violet but on the other hand, I am a private person," she admits. "To have to answer questions about my private life I find very disconcerting and I keep thinking why do they want to know how many husbands I've had?"

That said, and I have to ask, Christine has been married twice, is now divorced, and brought up her two children, Tariq, now 31, and Shola, 33, singlehandedly from a young age.

She wrote lots of short stories and poems over the years and penned the first line of The Olive Readers - "I don't know how long it is since I last saw Hephzibah" - about 20 years ago. Over the years she added bits, writing mostly when she was unhappy - when suffering from a rare gynaecological cancer (she's fine now); when one of her relationships was breaking up and when her children flew the nest.

It was a friend who suggested she enter the Richard and Judy competition. She had written about half the novel and had two rejections under her belt already, which had left her feeling "rather desperate".

"By the time I sent it off for the competition I really didn't care whether it did well or not," she says. "I just thought maybe it would never get published."

When she wrote her first line, she had little idea of characters, plot and pacing but as she wrote the plot unfolded by itself.

Her novel is set in a bleak future where books and other sources of information have been destroyed and a group called the Readers are hoping to claw back some history. It's written from the eyes of a young woman and has brought comparisons with Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

"When I started I didn't know what was going to come, I just had the first sentence," says Christine, who now lives in Bournemouth. "It was as if the characters took over. It was really quite a strange experience."

When she found out she had won the Richard and Judy competition, she had the daunting task of finishing the rest of the book. Being a busy career woman and mum, it's easy to see how the "domestic stuff" had got in the way over the years. But in the end, the housework had to wait.

"I realised when I was writing quite intensely that I couldn't cope with the everydayness of life," she says. "All my washing up was in the sink, the place really was a state.

"In the end I had two months in which to finish it. It wasn't the pressure of writing massive amounts but it was the idea that I was the winner. It was really scary. It would have been easier not to have been the winner."

Now she's got the added pressure of the notoriously difficult second novel. But this time, the plots and characters are already in her mind.

"It's set in the past, in about the 1860s in Dorset. It sort of involves the weather and psychiatry at the time - although it could all turn out to be something else," she laughs.

"Basically I'm a story teller, not a writer, it's the Celt in me."

It's early days, but The Olive Readers has already sold to Spain and Germany. There could even be film deals on the horizon.

But the self-effacing Christine is not likely to get too big for her Ecco boots. As a journalist, she knows that the media, which have been very good to her so far, can turn on her just as easily.

"Its the other reason I wasn't keen on winning, that the British don't like winners, they kind of knock you down and I guess you just have to brace yourself for it," she says.

"But I have great faith in my book. I do think it's a good read."

* The Olive Readers by Christine Aziz (Macmillan, £14.99).