From rock chick to apparatchik! Not many people can claim to have given up rock n roll for politics but Jo-Anne Nadler’s career is hardly conventional. Now an established political author and commentator Jo-Anne’s the only person working in the media today who can say she gave up a much envied job at Radio One to work at Conservative Central Office.

That was back in the run up the 1992 General Election, expected to be the closest for over a decade. “I was thrilled and pretty amazed to be offered the Radio One job when I was still at college”, says Jo-Anne, the first female producer that Radio One had ever recruited from outside the Beeb, “but much as I loved music, politics had been there first. I certainly hadn’t stressed it during my job interviews for Radio One but I had been a Young Conservatives in my teens and the chance to work at the heart of a campaign just seemed more me than producing the Top 40 show”.

So with her three years in pop after graduating from York University in History and Politics, Jo-Anne went back to her roots as a senior press officer for the Conservative Party. Then with an insiders’ knowledge and a great contacts book the BBC tempted her back as a political producer in 1993. She spent a couple of years learning her trade in regional television before being poached by BBC 1’s flagship, On The Record, where she went on to work as producer and reporter.

After the change of government in 1997 Jo-Anne saw an opportunity to write about the new Conservative leader. She went freelance to pursue a writing career and in 2000 published the only biography of William Hague, which was serialised in the Mail on Sunday. The book was unauthorised but written with Hague’s cooperation – the perfect arrangement.

Since then Jo-Anne has developed a career as a political commentator and broadcaster with regular contributions to national radio and TV plus a range of magazines and newspapers. She is currently promoting her second book, the critically acclaimed memoir, “Too Nice to be a Tory – It’s my Party and I’ll cry if I want to”, published by Simon and Schuster, Autumn 2004. It is a funny but biting insider’s account of the decline of the Conservative Party and an acutely observed social history of the last 25 years. Jo-Anne’s brings her unique perspective as a young, metropolitan woman to a Party which is generally none of the above! She is updating the book for a second edition later this year.