HE usually comes over on television as a languid, good humoured Northerner, but Michael Parkinson has an irascible side.

Either that, or Eve Isherwood happened to catch him one day when he'd got out of the wrong side of the bed.

The task seemed simple enough. Eve was organising the Woman's Own Children of Courage Awards for a PR firm and had been asked to phone Parky to find out whether he would take part.

The reply was somewhat unexpected.

"Don't be so stupid," he growled. "Why are you so daft as to ask me to do something for kiddies? They won't have a clue who I am."

"He went on for about 10 minutes," said Eve. "He gave me a real dressing down for wasting his time and inviting him to something he clearly felt he wasn't suited for. I was really embarrassed.

"But I suppose he was right. I had been asked to ring him by one of the bosses of the PR firm, who was obviously a fan of Michael Parkinson's television show but had totally overlooked the fact that children didn't watch it. As Parkinson pointed out, they needed someone they could relate to and it wasn't him. If he had done the awards, the evening could have fallen flat.

"What the children needed was one of the popular Radio One DJ's of the time or maybe Brian Cant, who was presenting Play School."

Fortunately, Eve was well used to dealing with the male of the species, as befits a young lady who in her teens was among the first intakes of girls at a previously all-boys public school in Cheltenham, and survived this haranguing from Parky.

As she did a similar blast from Claire Rayner, who threw a hissy fit when Eve refused to break an embargo on a heart disease story for the ebullient agony aunt.

Before Cheltenham, she had been to a girls' public school in Malvern - "I was there for five years and hated every day of them" - so the private education system certainly instilled some backbone in her. Along with the fact that her mother was killed in a road accident when Eve was eight and she grew up in an all-male household with a father and two older brothers. "I was used to fighting my corner," she said.

Those around here with long memories might recall her father, Tom Isherwood, who owned The Fox pub at Broadheath, near Tenbury Wells, in the late 60s. A steel stockholder, Tom bought the business as part of a retirement portfolio and the family moved to Worcestershire from the West Midlands.

After many years away, including a spell in Devon, where the seeds for this feature were sown, Eve returned to the county five years ago and now lives in Mamble, between Worcester and Tenbury Wells. The Devon connection is that during her time in the West Country, she began to write seriously and was published in the magazine Devon Today and had a number of short stories broadcast on BBC Radio Devon.

Now from her Worcestershire home she has gone one better and her first novel, Absent Light, is on the shelves at Waterstones and all good bookshops.

It features the dramas surrounding fictional character Helen Powers, a former scenes of crime officer with West Midlands Police, who finds her life threatened four years after leaving the force.

It's all dramatic stuff and Eve hopes it will be the first of a Helen Powers trilogy.

To research the action, she worked with scenes of crime officers from both the West Midlands and West Mercia forces, getting an insight into their techniques and ways of operating.

"I suppose I first became interested in writing when I was doing my A-levels," she said. "We had a fantastic English master who really inspired you.

"When I worked in PR, I was always happier doing the press release side than the chatting over the phone part.

"My first serious effort started to turn rather too autobiographical, so I scrapped that and decided to write a novel. I went for the scenes of crime angle because it's the in thing' at present with all the CSI series on television."

Her publishers obviously liked the idea too, because the Absent Light has hit the shelves in smart time.

It's brutal, bloody, sinister, full of intrigue and very readable.

Perhaps she ought to send Parky a copy with a covering note.