Frank Barrett has been travel editor of The Independent, has presented the BBC Holiday Show, appeared regularly on ITV’s Holidays From Hell and contributes to BBC Radio 4. Since 1994 he has been travel editor of The Mail on Sunday. ‘It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it,’ he says. ‘My writing days are normally involved with travel features. Some are my own but most are celebrity pieces – I talk on the phone to the likes of Steve Pemberton or Gregory Porter in order to write a travel piece based on their experiences.
‘While researching Treasured Island I discovered that a lot of writers are very bad sleepers. Dickens used to walk the streets of London at night writing in his head. When I wake up at night, I do find writing in the dark very productive. I have absolutely no interruptions so can become very focused. I seem to spend eighty per cent of my day answering emails – it’s very distracting. Writing in your head, as Dickens and others did, gives you a good starting point. You have to sit down with something that you can begin writing immediately. But I often fight a losing battle to keep off email and the internet. I’m very easily distracted.’