THE glamorous world of live television is familiar territory for Jane Lythell, a television producer who was there at the birth of breakfast TV in Britain.

As Jane Clarke, she worked on TV-am, ITV’s live breakfast show from 1983-1992, juggling presenters such as David Frost, Angela Rippon Anne Diamond, Nick Owen, Henry Kelly and Jayne Irving with celebrity interviewees including movie legends Charlton Heston and Bette Davis, Poirot actor David Suchet, and politicians Glenys Kinnock and Tony Benn.

Now she has written an “insider’s account” of the frenetic world of live television – and it’s pure fiction. In her newly published novel Woman Of The Hour, Jane has created London TV station StoryWorld TV where real-life stories are brought to its viewers - but the real dramas are played out behind the scenes.

In Woman Of The Hour, her third novel, she lifts the lid on the “monster egos and high drama” that come with working in live television. Divorced Liz Lyon is head of features at StoryWorld TV, a glamorous and exhilarating job. But as a single mother with a demanding teenage daughter and a demanding career, her life is a constant balancing act and when simmering tensions at the station erupt, she becomes embroiled in a power struggle.

Her nemesis is the station’s director Julius Jones, a bit of a bully but a man Liz respects because he has the power to connect with the programme’s audience. Jane has peopled her fictitious programme with ambitious anchor woman Fizzy Wentworth, agony aunt Betty, Sal, who presents a comedy slot, and TV chef Ledley.

“Live television is a seductive world with a feverish atmosphere,” said Jane, who worked as a producer and commissioning editor at TV-am for 15 years and is now a full-time novelist living in Brighton. “Working in it is a highly sought-after job. It is what I know, which is why wanted to write about it, but I also really wanted to write a book about a woman set in her working life. There are so many novels about women that are about them as mothers, as lovers, sisters, daughters, with an emphasis on their home and emotional lives. Very few have work as a backdrop.

“I was a single mother, I was feeling conflicted leaving my daughter at home but I had a great stonking great mortgage so unless I worked I could not pay the mortgage.

“Television is a difficult environment to work in because there’s a macho culture that says you have to be there until the job is done and you don’t complain. My book explains what that is like for a woman who is the single mother of a daughter who needs to be taken to school in the morning and collected again later on. Liz is a woman who is trying to keep all the balls up in the air.”

Jane, who has a daughter, Amelia, and lives with her partner, award-winning Grange Hill scriptwriter Barry Purchese, concedes that she has “drawn on aspects of people I know” to create her cast of characters but won’t reveal who. Fizzy, her fictitious presenter, looks younger than her age but is constantly concerned about her looks and feels very vulnerable to usurpers to her TV throne. “Presenters can look confident on air,” said Jane. “But they are insecure and need a lot of reassurance. When they come off air, you do not criticise them at all – they can’t take it.

“There’s a hunger in them to go on being on screen - they need to be in the limelight.”

Jane is happy to reveal her verdict on some for the presenters she worked with. Anne Diamond was a “smart cookie who ‘s very on the ball” and knew intuitively what the audience wanted, while Henry Kelly, who hosted the Saturday edition of Good Morning Britain, was “mercurial with oodles of charm”.

Jane’s challenge was to produce enough guests, ideas and material to fill three hours of live television, which comes with its own pitfalls. “Things can go wrong, very wrong,” said Jane. “A guest can misbehave or won’t come out of makeup or will say the wrong thing.”

How did her own guests behave? “Charlton Heston was a real gentleman who stood up when I entered the Green Room,” revealed Jane. “Tony Benn was lovely and came in with his own tape recorder, just in case, and Bette Davis, who was in her 80s at the time, insisted she would not go on without a cigarette. So we let her, even though it wasn’t allowed.”

Woman Of The Hour is the first of a series about StoryWorld TV, with the second novel acquired this month by publisher Head of Zeus and due to be published next summer. “I am thrilled,” said Jane, whose first two novels are the thrillers The Lie of You and After The Storm.

• Woman Of The Hour by Jane Lythell, priced £18.99, is out now and available from bookshops and Amazon.