Burn-out made me give it all up

At the height of her success, Lynne Franks stopped practising Buddhism, gave up her £125,000-a-year job and left her 20-year marriage within a week.

The PR guru who once plugged Brylcreem, Swatch and Next and who was the inspiration for pushy fashion victim Edina in Absolutely Fabulous, blames the upheaval on "burn-out".

"I had two small children and I was trying to be the perfect mother, the perfect woman and the perfect boss," she says. "I ended up running from situation to situation without stopping for breath."

Taking a couple of years off, Ms Franks abandoned London for LA in a bid to figure out what had gone wrong.

Five years on, the creator of London Fashion Week has returned to Maida Vale.

Working from home, she published The Seed handbook, which addresses the dilemma she wanted to escape.

"Women have a problem working in the corporate world because it's an environment designed for males," she says.

"Women no longer want to be surrogate men. They want to stay true to their femininity and make money at the same time. I am lucky to have space in my own home. I make lunch for my clients and work to my own timetable.

"With the advance of technology, if women opt to stay in the workplace, more and more of them will choose this in the future."