Before she became an author, Ali worked as a singer, journalist, magazine editor, assistant to a juggling unicyclist, and comedy columnist on BBC Radio.Ali describes herself as, at heart, an 11-year-old boy, and as a child spent a lot of time poking about in copses, building dens, climbing trees and digging up stuff.Ali lives in Southampton with her husband and sons and would never kill a creepy-crawly of any kind. They are more scared of her than she is of them (creepy-crawlies, not her husband and sons).