MUCH-LOVED children’s author Jacqueline Wilson has publicly said she is in a same-sex relationship.

The mind behind Tracy Beaker told The Guardian she had been living “very happily” with a woman called Trish for 18 years.

But the 74-year-old said this announcement would not surprise any of her close friends.

She told the publication: “I’ve never really been in any kind of closet.

“It would be such old news for anybody that has ever known anything much about me.

“Even the vaguest acquaintance knows perfectly well that we are a couple.”

She met Trish, who is a bookseller, when she was in her 50s following the breakdown of her marriage, and the pair are currently isolating together at Wilson’s Sussex home.

She has also discussed same-sex relationships in her latest book, Love Frankie, but said girls currently struggling to acknowledge their sexuality could find “much more glamorous examples” than her.

She said: “I don’t think that girls would ever have wanted a grey-haired, wrinkly writer as a role model if they were wanting to feel good about maybe being gay.”