Helen Croydon

Best-selling author, journalist and broadcaster. Gives inspirational talks on going from party girl to GB triathlete and informative talks on pitching to the media and writing memoir

Helen Croydon is a best-selling author of three books. Her latest title This Girl Ran: Tales of a Party Girl Turned Triathlete is a memoir about ditching a glamorous city girl lifestyle, toughening up through outdoor sport and qualifying to be a GB triathlete.

Her other books include the dating memoir Sugar Daddy Diaries, which became a WHSmith bestseller in 2011, and Screw the Fairytale, a polemic questioning whether marriage and commitment are still viable in modern society.

As a freelance journalist she has written for all UK national newspapers and magazines such as Psychologies, Cosmo, Top Sante, Woman's Own. She's well known for her immersive reporting, such as going undercover on an adultery website for The Mirror, joining a group of men in Ukraine on a 'wife finding tour' for The Mail, or 'night swimming' in the Royal Victoria Docks in winter for Metro.

As a broadcaster she does paper reviews for BBC News Channel and Sky News or you may have seen her joining topical discussions on Good Morning Britain, ITV This Morning, Five News, Woman's Hour and Newsnight. She has behind-the-camera experience too as a freelance producer at ITV News and ITV London News, She started her journalism career as a newsreader and reporter in local radio and then worked as a staff producer and reporter in various divisions of ITN, before going freelance in 2009.

Helen's media experience in front and behind the camera and across print, broadcast and digital newsrooms is unique. This makes her an expert in pitching stories to the press and she runs training courses for PRs and comms teams on developing and pitching strong story angles.

Outside of journalism she is a GB triathlete and endurance sport addict. In 2015 she competed for GB in age-group World Championships triathlon. Not bad considering two years earlier she was a self-confessed party girl who wouldn't even walk to the tube in the rain in case it ruined her hair. She is passionate about inspiring more women to take up recreational sport.

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Keynotes

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This Girl Ran: From Party Girl to GB Triathlete

"Four years ago I wouldn't even walk to the tube in the rain in case it ruined my hair. Two years later I was fixing punctures in hail storms and swimming in freezing lakes and training for World Championships triathlon."

Helen's inspirational and witty talk is based on her book This Girl Ran. She tells the story of breaking away from a glamorous lifestyle of cocktail bars and high fashion and toughening up through outdoor sport.

It all began when she joined a running club because she need alternative social activities to drinking! At her first race she didn't even own a backpack so she turned up with her kit in a designer tote bag. Driven by a thirst for new activities and friends, Helen took on increasingly tougher endurance challenges until in 2015 she qualified to represent GB in her age group at World Championships Triathlon.

Her talk is funny and inspirational and proof that anyone can break through personal barriers. This talk will particularly resonate with women who don't consider themselves tough or sporty.

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How to Pitch to the Press

Helen has 15 years experience as a journalist across multiple media platforms including radio, television, newspapers, magazines and digital so knowing what makes a story is instinctive to her.

As a journalist and producer, she's seen every type of pitch from PRs and entrepreneurs vying for publicity, but only a handful are successful. Using real-life examples from her experiences working in-house at places like ITV News, Mail Online she shares what different types of media want in a story.

As an author and TV commentator, she's often the one vying for publicity herself. She pitches stories, comment piece and TV appearances to different media platforms daily. Her latest book secured coverage in The Telegraph, Express, Huffington Post, Woman magazine, Health and Fitness Magazine, Sky News and that was all down to effective pitching. In this session Helen shares the tools and insights on when, how and to whom to pitch a story.

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Writing Memoir

As the author of two successful memoirs and one narrative non-fiction title, Helen shares her strategies for plotting, writing and pitching a manuscript.

There is more to writing a memoir than telling a true story. Through her own examples and those of other well known memoirs, Helen unveils techniques for channeling complex stories into meaningful story arcs, suggests ways to make a story more commercial and summarises essential legal issues in writing memoir.
This session is based on her popular memoir writing course which she teaches at City Lit.

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Screw The Fairytale: The New Rules of Modern Relationships

Based on her second book Screw The Fairytale: A Modern Guide to Sex and Love this thought-provoking talk questions whether life-long full-time relationships are still realistic in the modern world.

In her book, Helen set out to explore alternative relationships to conventional marriage to ask what works. She visited a polyamorous commune, she interviewed couples in open relationships, joined a networking group of sperm donor mothers who had given up on men and interviewed life-long singletons, a-sexuals, married couples who live apart and those in submissive-dominant 'contracts.'

Using witty anecdotes from her own interviews and experiences, the latest figures on fidelity and marriage and theories from psychologists, anthropologists and philosophists this talk will get everyone debating.

Helen has talked on this topic for Intelligence Squared, How the Light Gets In, the Women's Institute and several supper clubs.

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